Evolution Equity Partners is an international venture capital investor partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to develop market leading cyber-security and enterprise software companies.
Based in New York City and Zurich, Switzerland, the firm is managed by investment and technology entrepreneurs who have built companies around the world and leverage their operating, technical and product development expertise to help entrepreneurs win.
Evolution has interest in companies utilizing big-data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, SaaS, mobile and the convergence of consumer and enterprise software to build leading information technology companies.
Current and past investments include: AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG), Cognitive Security (NASDAQ: CSCO), OpenDNS (NASDAQ: CSCO), Carbon Black, Onapsis, Security Scorecard, DFLabs, Fortscale, Logpoint, Eperi, DICE, Panaseer among others.
WHERE WE INVEST
We see great technology companies being built around the world and believe that a market leader can emerge from just about anywhere. The talent and creativity we see globally is astounding. We work with US based entrepreneurs looking to scale their business internationally as well as European based entrepreneurs seeking to grow into new markets. Evolution leads Series A rounds and later but also invests earlier in segments where there is meaningful opportunity to build a great company.
- What We are Focused On: Cyber-Security / Enterprise Software / Consumer/Enterprise Crossover
- Where We Invest: North America / Europe / Israel
- When We Invest: Seed / Series A / Series B / Growth
HOW WE WORK
We know that trust; honesty and transparency are the building blocks of a solid partnership with limited partners, entrepreneurs and our team and strive to build on these principles every day. This is core to any partnership we enter.
We have founded and grown technology companies and understand the challenge of converting a great idea into a great company; likewise we have held senior operating roles and as board members of fast growing software companies and the experience of scaling globally.
Whether it is a strategic decision, product launch, engineering decision, choosing a key employee or partner we have been there and learned both from our successes and mistakes. We share these insights with our entrepreneurs every chance we get.
THE EVOLUTION GROWTH FOOTPRINT
We typically partner with entrepreneurs and management teams that are specifically seeking our cyber-security and enterprise software industry expertise and the knowledge and resources we have to help their business grow into new markets and geographies. We work with leading American based companies to help them enter international markets, develop channel partner relationships, win customers, help hire key management to execute the plan and vis-a-versa European companies seeking to enter the United States. We leverage industry knowledge, our Chief Security Officer Advisory Board, global relationships with key partners in enterprise and government that will help enable companies to be successful. The Evolution Growth Footprint allows us to leverage valuable resources that we began building well in advance of launching Evolution in 2008.
OUR HISTORY
The partners at Evolution Equity Partners began working together at AVG Technologies (NYSE: AVG) in 2003 where Richard Seewald and Dennis Smith were early investors and board members and where JR Smith was CEO and Karel Obluk was CTO and Chief Scientist. The company became a leader in the consumer and enterprise internet security segment with over 300 million users worldwide with Karel Obluk the architect of the technology platform and J.R. Smith leading the company to an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Together the Evolution team oversaw an acquisition program where over a dozen technology companies were acquired and successfully integrated, taking AVG from a single product company to multi product security platform and revenues going from $4 million to $355 million over a period of 9 years. To date AVG Technologies remains one of the most successful security investments globally in terms of returns to investors as well one of the largest software exits from Europe over the last decade. Technology and investment entrepreneurs Richard Seewald and Dennis Smith founded Evolution Equity Partners in 2008 and were joined by JR Smith and Karel Obluk after they completed their roles at AVG Technologies.
CYBERSECURITY
Cybersecurity represents one of the most promising areas for disruptive innovation today. A confluence of factors is driving long term secular demand for better security technology and increased security spending including the greater frequency, sophistication and maliciousness of attacks, growth of cloud workloads, migration of data with greater concentration of data in the cloud, A strong, lucrative black market for personally identifiable information and corporate data, expansion of the network perimeter to incorporate a greater number of connected devices with access to sensitive data, a lack of preparedness and sufficient training by enterprises in protecting data and dealing with the new threat environment among other rapidly evolving threats to enterprises and consumers alike.
ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE
There is tremendous change in the way businesses utilize technology that is revolutionizing the workplace and the way companies interact with their employees and customers. The acceleration of disruptive business applications, social, mobile, SaaS, big data and shift to the cloud are changing the way we work and the economic impact will be significant over the next years creating significant opportunity for entrepreneurs.
CONSUMER / ENTERPRISE CROSSOVER
The user behaviour of software and internet consumers is increasingly having significant impact on enterprise technology markets and vice versa. Evolution will focus its consumer investment exposure in these “cross-over” segments. The convergence of social, mobile, cloud and big data will continue to drive significant growth across key consumer segments which are expected to continue over the next decade.