1. Home
  2. Companies
  3. IMS Digital Ventures
ID

IMS Digital Ventures

About

Unlike other venture capital firms, we go beyond funding to de-risk the start-up building process and increase the speed and probability of success.

We partner with bold entrepeneurs with deep expertise and an idea for how to disrupt their industry. We look for opportunities to scale B2B business models in a sizeable market, leveraging innovative and proprietary technology. Our domains span SaaS, web3, e-commerce marketplaces, blockchain, and AI.

  • 10 Ventures across SaaS, web3, e-commerce marketplaces & more
  • $250 Million portfolio valuation
  • 300 Software engineers, analysts, and growth marketers
  • 5 Offices including London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore

Similar companies

MO

Mosaic

We founded Mosaic as optimists who see technology as a force for good, and believe that the startup ecosystem will positively impact society. Our passion is to partner early with inspiring, ambitious tech founders: renegades who reimagine the world and shape it their way. We also believe in Europe. Breakthrough businesses are starting and scaling here with increasing frequency, powered by unparalleled engineering talent across the region. Our Promise to Founders We are excited to join your journey as an ally. We recognize that venture capital would not exist without entrepreneurs like you, who put everything on the line. We are thrilled when you choose to work with us, and honored to support your dream coming to fruition. As your partner, you can expect the following:‍ Trust: We have faith in you, and commit to supporting the business for the entire journey with intellectual honesty and unbiased counsel. Long term perspective: Success is not built overnight; we are in it for the long haul. Venture capital is a business that rewards patience on all levels.‍ Boutique service:We are a small, highly collaborative team who all pitch in to help across the portfolio. We typically make just 5-10 new investments per year, and every relationship matters. Growth mindset:We are humble, curious, open and straightforward -- having learned from both mistakes and successes. As independent thinkers we often take a different view from the herd. We don’t claim to know everything, and our approach is inquisitive rather than prescriptive. Low friction:We appreciate the value of your time and commit to simple, transparent business and quick turnarounds. Thesis-driven Since the 1990s, we’ve enjoyed a privileged ringside seat alongside hundreds of tech startups in many industries and geographies. Some have been successful, a number super-successful and inevitably, others didn’t work out. From these experiences, we have developed a thesis-driven approach to investing, where we try to imagine how a given market will unfold in the next 5-10 years, and then look for certain horizontal industry and business characteristics. Momentum is nice but we don’t need to see “traction” or baked KPIs to build conviction. There are general characteristics of businesses we like to invest in: Big, addressable markets and/or uncharted whitespace Distinctive product: love, trust, early customer evangelists Business model innovation, i.e. disrupting the value chain A large potential future moat, beyond pure scale and scope. From network effects, technical leadership, or other sources. This helps us derive the consequent gross margins and unit economics Broad customer (and supplier) distribution, i.e. no concentration immediately adjacent in value chain Long tail of independent adopters. Bonus for bottom-up word-of-mouth We invest in ‘whale-hunting’ too, but typically prefer to invest when there is a handful of customers (or highly relevant sector experience amongst the founders) Capital efficiency. After our first cheque, we are aligned with founders/on their side of the table, so funding pays for people, not inventory/asset Thematic Focus We look to back businesses catalyzed by emerging technology that may create a new market from nothing, or else materially disrupt the status quo. The themes we focus on evolve, as successive waves emerge, grow in force, and eventually ebb away. Historically, this led us to operate and invest in a wide range of web and mobile applications including search, social, and digital media. We are comfortable in both B2C and B2B businesses and particularly drawn to marketplace and SaaS/subscription business models. Our track record includes investing in global category leaders such as Alibaba, Etsy, Squarespace and Transferwise. In our current fund, the themes we are focused on include: Machine Intelligence Future of Money Edge Applications Work OS Open Bazaars Human Empowerment We continue to reflect on the impact of the pandemic. We will feel its reverberations not just in public health, but also in almost every aspect of the wider economy, as it impacts jobs and industries in ways that are still unfolding. We believe it also will become an accelerator for many tech trends and sectors, including health, education, and may have a dramatic impact on retail and real estate. In particular, as new work behaviours emerge and opportunities arise, we are deeply curious to understand what forms of value will be created. Our Story Mosaic was founded by Simon and Toby who first met in the U.S. in 1995 at graduate school. We were lucky enough to work in leading Silicon Valley startups at the dawn of the Internet and since then, have collectively amassed over 50 years working in tech, split equally between operating and investing, across the US and Europe (and approaching half of that time working together!) We set out for Mosaic to bring a focused proposition to early stage investing in Europe, providing unique perspective, culture, and founder experience. In the six years since launch, and now we are proud to have created a firm with a strong operating philosophy and values based in trust, intellectual honesty, and integrity, and an amazing group of talented individuals to deliver on our promise to founders.

SP

Square Peg

We were founded on the belief that technology would transform every industry in the world - and that brilliant, ambitious founders would sit at the heart of this change. We're squarely focused on helping these founders succeed. How we helpInvestment: First and foremost, we invest in people, and focus on building relationships with empathy and alignment. We partner with remarkable founders and work to ensure they've got the strategic insights and help they need across multiple rounds. Talent: Our founders tell us that scaling teams is the most challenging part of leading high-growth companies. We have a dedicated team that can help diagnose, design and build the foundations of each startup's talent engine, tailored each time. Community: You're not alone in your founder journey. Building a business is made easier with friends and well-connected allies - a resource we have plenty of. Join a peer group who will be kind, honest and interested in your journey. Frequently asked questions Whether you're curious about our terms or timeframes, below is a good overview of how we do things. What's the 101 on Square Peg? Square Peg is a global investment firm on a mission to empower exceptional founders. With investing teams in Sydney, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, and Singapore, Square Peg invests in emerging technology companies across the internet economy. Square Peg today manages US$3 billion in assets across its venture capital, opportunities and global listed equities funds and in addition has delivered material realised returns of US$0.6 billion. Since 2012 we have invested in over 50 companies including Fiverr, Canva, Rokt, FinAccel, Tomorrow and Airwallex. Through our venture, opportunities and listed equity funds, we invest in tech companies from the pre-seed stage to the post-IPO stage. What stage do you invest in? Globally, our sweet spot for a new investment is Seed-Series A. We have always been an early-stage investor, and were seed investors in companies such as Canva, Zeller and Tomorrow. If you’re wondering if you’re ‘too early’ for Square Peg, the answer is you’re not - as an example, we met and invested in Ben and Dom from Zeller just weeks after they founded the company. What's the investment process? The investment process is designed to help us understand your business, learn about your vision and give you the time to get to know us. If we have a long-standing relationship or you’re at the very early stages, it can take just a few meetings to reach an investment decision. If you’re raising a large round and we haven’t met before, it can take longer. While we like to make swift investment decisions, we encourage founders to take their time getting to know investors - it’s a decade-long decision, so a few additional weeks of diligence is likely well-spent. This is how you’ll experience an investment process with us: We’re often introduced to founders via email. This email hopefully includes a compelling deck that explores their idea. When reviewing the materials the founder sent, we look for a few things: a unique insight about an important problem in a big market, a bright vision, and a world-class team with the ambition to go after it. At this stage, we’ll determine whether the business fits our investment philosophy and ensure it’s not directly competitive with any of our existing investments. The first meeting will be 45 minutes to an hour and may happen online or in person. We encourage the founder to do most of the talking and hope we spend the time exploring the insights of their team and specifics of their business. We may meet a few more times to explore any remaining concepts and give the founder plenty of time to ask questions about how we partner with founders and ensure they’re comfortable. You may meet other members of the investment team at this stage. To receive a term-sheet, you’ll meet the global investment team for a one-hour conversation. The team will have already read a detailed briefing note on your business and be prepared with questions they hope you’ll answer. Though high-stakes, this meeting is friendly and conversational. Once the meeting ends, the investment team will vote whether to approve the investment - this means two ‘yes’ votes from the partnership. The Investor you’ve worked closely with will be in touch that evening to discuss next steps. In anonymous feedback from our founders, we’ve been told we run a quick, transparent and collaborative investment process. Founders have often remarked that the investment process helped them to deepen their understanding of their business. For all founders who meet the team, we aim to ensure this is your experience, too. Do you invest globally? We invest in companies founded in Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia and Israel. Most of our portfolio companies expand from the regions in which they were founded to grow in markets overseas. Examples from the portfolio which have taken this journey include Canva, Fiverr, Airwallex and Rokt. Our funds are structured so that we have complete flexibility to invest between these regions. What do you invest in? First and foremost, we invest in people. We believe that founders with a compelling vision who surround themselves with talented and mission-driven people can change the world. We’ve seen founders such as Mel from Canva, Micha from Fiverr and Jack from Airwallex build extraordinary companies, and we could never have predicted that design, digital services or borderless finance would be some of the most important problems to solve this decade. We founded Square Peg on the belief that technology would transform every industry in the world - and that we can’t predict the future of creativity, industry or ingenuity. So, we’re comfortable being a generalist technology investor, with founders at the centre of our universe. Historically, we have invested heavily into fintech, consumer internet, SaaS, edtech and healthtech, with significant and notable exceptions outside of these themes. Take a look at our portfolio to learn more about the kinds of companies we invest in. How much do you invest in a new company? The smallest first cheque we’ve written was USD$100k, and our largest first cheque was USD$35m. Usually, most first-cheques are $5-$10m, but we’re happy and able to go smaller or bigger. Do you have strict ownership requirements? As a general rule, somewhere between 10-20% ownership is the most common outcome of a venture investment partnership. In practice, we approach all fundraises with a long-term mindset, which means we’re willing and able to lead and participate in rounds where the fundraising dynamics are different to this standard. What’s important to us is ensuring that the founders and our team are deeply aligned and that the company is well-positioned to go after the mission that drives their team. One of our core values is anchor to optimism - optimism that the company and founders will be successful - which means we are far more focused on long-term outcomes and options than short-term percentage holdings. Who are your Limited Partners? Our investors, or 'LPs' as we call them, are a diverse group of superannuation funds, high-net-worth individuals, team members and family offices. We’re grateful to include world-leading industry pension funds such as HostPlus and AustralianSuper as long-term investors. We are fortunate to have investors whose approach to venture capital investing is aligned with our own: ambitious, committed and long-term. How do I approach the team about an investment? Most founders who we’ve invested in connected with us via someone in our network: our portfolio founders, angel investors and VCs we've co-invested with, our LPs, and community leaders in each ecosystem. On occasion, we have also invested in founders who emailed us cold (Mike from ZeroCo, we’re looking at you).

SV

Sierra Ventures

Sierra Ventures invests in the future of The Enterprise. We invest early – primarily Seed and Series A – and look for proven product market fit, disruption in the market, and strong IP. We tend to lead investment rounds and reserve capital for follow on rounds to support our entrepreneurs as they grow. We believe that partnership is paramount. We work closely with all of the entrepreneurs we invest in, guiding them with expertise and capital to help their companies grow and deliver on their promise. We understand that great companies don’t get built overnight, and we don’t mind rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty. In fact, we enjoy it. Sierra’s Investment FocusDATA/AI The volume of data has exploded, and with the emergence of the cloud, new tools are being developed with many data infrastructure software platforms focusing specifically on artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML). We’re excited about companies that make it easier to ingest, access, and analyze data. Sub-sectors within Data/AI include AI/ML and Big Data. VERTICAL SAAS Many industries that rely on excel or pen and paper have been forced to dramatically increase the pace of technology adoption. Vertical SaaS represents the shift to specialization where software is business-specific and is designed for a specific domain. Sub-sectors within Vertical SaaS include FinTech, EnterpriseApps, and Security. INFRASTRUCTURE Next-Gen Infrastructure will be the core connecting fabric for all future technology capabilities. Wide-scale improvement is needed in order to enable applications to run consistently in almost any location across the globe. Organizations have expedited infrastructure modernization strategies which continues to drive growth in the sector. Sub-sectors within Infrastructure include Cloud and IoT. Next-Gen TechnologiesDIGITAL HEALTH Adoption of Health software has been faster than ever before due to the pandemic tailwind and technology trends that put the consumer in charge. New tools are being developed to reach patients creating opportunities with Pharma, Providers, and Payers. We anticipate a dramatic shift towards more value based care (payer / provider) and digitization and decentralization (pharma). WEB3 Web3 promises to make the internet as accessible, open sourced, secure, and decentralized as possible with the goal of benefiting the people engaging, not central organizations. We are looking at the full Web3 ecosystem including Decentralized Applications (DApps), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Cryptocurrencies, and more. A sub-sector we focus on within Web3 includes Blockchain. INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION Digitally non-native industries like Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Logistics are seeking ways to find cost parity and production reliability while adhering to increasing demand across the globe. Humans alone will not be able to keep pace with these market trends and automation will be a key driver in movements like Industry 4.0. Sub-sectors within Industrial Automation include Robotics and Devices. CONSUMER The ubiquity of smartphones has enabled consumers to access goods and services with relative ease and companies are tuning into customer needs and engaging with their increasingly loyal customer base, leading to viral adoption patterns. Additionally, Consumer social platforms have allowed individuals to express themselves and make money doing it, giving more power to the “Creator Economy”. We are interested in Creator Economy and mission driven D2C Applications & Marketplaces. ECOMMERCE A fast growing eCommerce market has been bolstered by the pandemic and every part of the value chain is seeing disruption. The eCommerce software market is driven by market trends like headless eCommerce and ReCommerce. B2B eCommerce has exploded globally and we think the US market will catch up in the coming years. A sub-sector we focus on within eCommerce is Marketplaces. EDTECH Digital and tech-enabled learning has been accelerated in the classroom and the boardroom by the pandemic and social trends such as “the great resignation”. Trends like VR/AR and the Metaverse becoming mainstream combined with the price of enablement devices like smartphones, tablets, and computers decreasing to make technology more accessible than ever have created a market that is ripe for EdTech to flourish.

5S

500 Southeast Asia

500 Global is a venture capital firm with more than $2.7 billion in assets under management that invests early in founders building fast-growing technology companies. We focus on markets where technology, innovation, and capital can unlock long-term value and drive economic growth. We invest far and wide, across sectors and geographies. 500 Global’s Southeast Asia family of funds have backed over 270+ companies, including $1B+ companies Grab, Bukalapak, Carousell, Carsome, and FinAccel. This is just the beginning – we are actively growing to serve more founders, as well as connect startups with capital, expertise, and global networks to help them succeed. To uplift people and economies through entrepreneurship We believe these will be the growth areas in Southeast Asia, and actively invest in the region’s most talented entrepreneurs shaping the future. Sustainable Cities Cities are the lifeblood of Southeast Asia which we believe will be home to almost 400 million people by 2030. Can technology transform our cities into environmentally sustainable havens through innovations in energy, transport, waste management, food and agriculture? Can these cities bring us closer in a safe and empathetic way? Rural Digitization The story of cities is only part of the story. Can we include and uplift the rest of our region and seize the rural technology opportunity? Can we build solutions that help leapfrog rural development and provide people with the same access and conveniences as cities? Fintech for All The digital economy depends heavily on financial infrastructure to connect us together. We believe financial technology and embedded finance can usher in a new era of financial inclusion and returns, from smoothing income volatility, access to credit, to insurance that matters. Can we architect a financial-savvy world where no one is left behind? All-Commerce Ecosystem e-Commerce of the past decade seems to have expanded into “all-commerce” where consumers demand to buy anything, anywhere (whether online or offline), and have delivered to their doorstep anytime they choose. What innovations in global trade, logistics, supply chains and trust are needed to make this a reality? Human & Machine Productivity Technology can profoundly impact a nation’s future through increases in productivity and GDP. Likewise, we believe competition is also making technology adoption among MSMEs and large enterprises a necessity. Can ed-tech, machine middleware, low and no-code software solutions, SaaS platforms, and other innovations build more resilient economies? Healthcare & Self-care We believe healthcare is often overlooked and underinvested, until it is too late. The recent pandemic has underscored the importance of taking care of ourselves. To us, this “self-care” extends beyond just the body and also into the mind and spirit. How will technology help us take care of ourselves and each other holistically? Web 3.0 The internet is ripe for evolution, and users are discovering unprecendented ways to own, sell and trade digital assets. What do we need to create a new and completely decentralized ecosystem that’s safe and inclusive The Creator Economy Independent creators are building successful businesses through sharing their knowledge, skills and creativity. We believe this will be the main way we teach, learn, and entertain each other, and more importantly, grow together. How can technology help creators foster more authentic connections with people? Our expertise is local We have team members across Southeast Asia who bring experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and operators from leading technology companies. A regional investment strategy based on diversification and scale Across 500 Global’s Southeast Asia family of funds, we invest in founders building technology companies that drive economic growth in fast-growing markets in the region. In doing so, we provide investors with both diversification, scale and returns. Our goal is to back the best wherever they’re based. Our early stage funds typically invest US$250,000 to US$500,000 in founders based primarily in or serving Southeast Asia. After our wire reaches you, our team becomes your first call for strategy, capital growth, marketing, and all-things company building.

RV

RRE Ventures

For nearly thirty years, RRE Ventures has been a leading venture capital firm in New York with nearly $2.5B under management and +400 portfolio companies. With over 25 IPOs and dozens of trade sales through the years, there is a lot going on at any given time. Recent well-known companies include Datadog, Venmo, Braintree, DCG, Noom, Kindbody, Spring Health, Olo, and BuzzFeed, among many other category-defining businesses. We pride ourselves not only on investing in great entrepreneurs and delivering stellar returns to our LPs but also on being supportive partners to our portfolio companies and active members of the venture community.

SC

Smash Capital

We started with the ambition to build the firm where we would want to go work every day. Smash Capital began as our startup. Our culture is extremely entrepreneurial. While our ambition is to build a generational firm and to grow our organization considerably, today we are enjoying the advantages inherent in a small team. We take advantage of our speed, real-time communication and flat organizational structure every day. We are hyper aware of the critical contribution of every member of our core team, and we encourage everyone here to think like an owner. Our founding team includes builders and creators who didn’t love the venture capital “product” we were offered as founders. We approach founders with enormous respect and a bit of awe at the enormity of what they attempt to do - the overwhelming personal stakes, sacrifice, belief and commitment they demonstrate in their life’s work. When most choose touch football, founders choose tackle. We work very hard; the founders we work with work harder. We believe in the power of creative constraints. When brainstorming a list of potential names for the firm, we limited ourselves to one syllable, spelled like it sounds, so a then 7-year-old could say where their parent worked. The inspiration for the name Smash came from the sound of a collision in a comic book: BOOM SMASH POW. We value, respect, and partner daily with the biggest and best-known competitors in our industry. They and we know we are a little different. We know that our most important core competency every day is finding and winning great deals. But we know that our lasting mark is in helping great people and great companies succeed over time. That’s how our investors grade our performance and how we grade ourselves.