Dogwood Ventures

Marathon Venture Capital is an early-stage investor helping ambitious founders build world-class technology companies. The firm currently manages about €100 million in commitments between two funds. Our portfolio companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from leading global investment firms while catering to customers on the Fortune 500 list or being acquired by them. We invest the first million and roll our sleeves up to help you build a fast-growing,world-class software company.

We invest in capital-efficient SaaS companies ready to take the next big jump. Our founder's roots run deep. Entrepreneurs ourselves, for thirty years our mission has been to help tech founders grow and realize their vision. Our first decade focused on financial advisory, having advised over 200 tech firms on high-value outcomes. Operators at heart, we launched Kennet’s US presence in 2000 with a focus on helping founder-led bootstrapped companies achieve their potential. Over the past 20 years, we have taken an entrepreneurial approach to international investing by combining analytics, talent, and capital to cultivate over 50 high-growth ventures with almost $1 billion invested globally. In 2021, Kennet recapitalized, and the North American and European teams restructured to focus on their respective markets. The result is Savant Growth; a US fund with a powerful software and operations platform dedicated to accelerating growth for capital-efficient SaaS companies. Our mission is to help our founders/CEOs build high-growth market-leading companies. We do not work alone. We have the power of our operations platform through DevSavant and SaleSavant. We continue to partner with Kennet, managing Kennet V's and Kennet VI's US investment program. Together, we work to achieve global market leadership for our companies.

As former entrepreneurs and operators, we have been in your shoes. We have founded, built and sold companies; we have recruited and led employees and management teams; and we have tackled many of the challenges that are unique to early-stage companies. With over 100 years of collective experience as founders, operators and board members, we have plenty of scar tissue and insights to help you avoid pitfalls and to optimize your business. We consider every investment to be a long-term partnership and aim to bring much more than just capital to help you build your company. In addition to evaluating every investment on the fundamentals, we are particularly interested in finding opportunities that leverage our experiences and unique resources. We focus only on industry segments that we know extremely well and where we have deep, relevant networks that can be tapped for our companies. We love early-stage technology investing and are energized by working with brilliant entrepreneurial minds. We are excited to share our operational experience and entrepreneurial instincts. We are a small team, which allows us to be responsive and nimble, working at the same clock speed as our entrepreneurial partners. We bring complementary backgrounds and leverage every member of our team for every company.

StartFast Fund invests at the Seed/A Round stages in B2B SaaS companies located outside major US Venture Capital hubs. Our geographic focus enables us to invest at attractive valuations; our companies can scale cost-effectively; and our exits command high return multiples. We like to invest in diverse teams with first-hand experience of the problems they are solving. The StartFast team consists of experienced entrepreneurs who have been building companies and investing together for nearly two decades.

We look similar, but we're fundamentally different to other venture funds. We've built our own businesses. We're investing our own money. We're not limited in what we can do. We invest in people, not ideas. We seek founders who are passionate about building generationally great companies. We focus on fast growth tech companies ...but we’re infinitely inquisitive Our depth of experience and lack of constraint are powerful when it comes to working with great founders. Our experience lends itself to founders of technology start-ups who are building growing businesses and who value our capital and experience. We look for growth equity positions, where we’re all on the same side of the table. Because we've been there before, we’re interested in simple capital tables with aligned, participating shareholders. Our best experiences have been when we're the only shareholder, and when we invested at inception. We don’t have a fund horizon or limitations. This lets us play the long-game for the truly outstanding companies. Our view is that it's your company and we'll do what we can to help you succeed. We're happy to buy founder or secondary shares where it makes sense. Fundamentally, what matters to us is that we back high integrity founders to build world-class businesses. Our Investment Focus This is what we value and look for in our investments. But we’re infinitely inquisitive (that is, we break rules!). So if your business doesn’t necessarily tick all these boxes and you are raising venture / growth capital or might in the future, please drop us a line (no, it doesn’t need to be a warm intro!) Great people: Passionate entrepreneurs that we like and want to work with. Complex domains: Companies that are solving significant problems. Business software: Software that has the capacity to be mission critical over time. Recurring revenue: Business models which are – or look like – recurring revenue. Growing markets: Markets that are rapidly growing (though we often find the best SaaS businesses start with small TAMs). Founders we can help: Companies and founders who have a deep ability to scale and learn and where we understand their domains.

We are customer-obsessed, relentless about creating winning teams, operators and builders, long-term partners, consistent, and proven. TIA stands for “Thought Into Action” and is the philosophy we live by. Founded in 2014, TIA Ventures is an evolution of the Thought into Action Entrepreneurship Incubator (2009) and our passion for accelerating exceptional entrepreneurs. We are customer-obsessed, relentless about creating winning teams, operators and builders, long-term partners, consistent, and proven.