Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, OVP Venture Partners is the granddaddy of the Seattle venture capital industry.

But this elder statesman is not slowing down as it enters the golden years.

In fact, based on conversations I had with several partners today at the firm's annual Technology Summit, things have heated up in the past nine months. And OVP is moving in some new directions.

Managing Partner Chad Waite told me that the firm has five term sheets in various stages of negotiation, an extraordinarily high number that he said speaks to the quality of entrepreneurs that are emerging in the Northwest. Some follow-on financings also are close to being announced.

Interestingly, two of the new deals involve Seattle-area startups in the digital media arena (one deal closed today) and another two are in the clean tech space.

Historically, OVP has not spent a lot of its efforts in those categories, focusing instead on digital biology, computer networking and security.

OVP's Lucinda Stewart

But that may be changing, with a slight twist.

Managing partner Lucinda Stewart said the firm sometimes gets a "bad rap" for not participating in the digital media/online advertising sector.

But she said the core philosophy at OVP as it relates to the Internet is to focus on the next wave of "analytics, tools and infrastructure" that will help companies make sense of the content created on the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world. It essentially wants to help companies analyze data so that they can better target customers, an area where OVP has already scored with the sale of Bellevue's Intelligent Results to First Data Corp. last year.

"This first wave of B2C social networking stuff, we are glad it got developed because it created a multibillion-dollar market and a multibillion-dollar potential value in the data," said Stewart. "Now, what we want to do is go do something with the data."

The latest investment, which Stewart declined to disclose, was started by experienced entrepreneurs directly in that space. And she is looking for other investments, forming an advisory board of experts such as Dave Jakubowski of Specific Media that are helping guide the firm along.

In fact, OVP has used that model to expand into other areas, most notably Waite's push into digital biology following the successful sale of portfolio company Rosetta Inpharmatics to Merck for $620 million in 2001. That sector now constitutes an important part of OVP's portfolio, with companies such as Nanostring Technologies and Complete Genomics.

Stewart said they are taking a page out of that playbook to do the same thing in digital media and clean tech.

"What I think OVP does really well, is that we think about stuff and then build a war chest of people and thoughts and networks before we go after something," she said.

That counters the approach of some venture firms, which she said use the "spray and pray" approach to investing: Toss out 10 investments and pray that one hits it big.

"That is just not our style," she said. "We will never be the company that has the most deals done in a year. But when we do deals, I think we do them really thoughtfully."

And the partners are hopeful the strategy pays off, allowing them to pursue another 25 years of innovative companies. Gerry Langeler, for one, said he hopes to be wheeled up to the 50th anniversary of the firm, adding that there is "nothing as energizing" as being around entrepreneurs who want to change the world.