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Information Venture Partners Closes Third Venture Capital Fund at $101M

Wednesday, 05 May 2021 09:00 AM

Information Venture Partners

The closing of Fund III validates the growing appetite for early-stage investment opportunities in North American B2B financial technology and enterprise SaaS companies

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 5, 2021 / Information Venture Partners ("Information VP"), a Toronto-based venture capital firm that primarily invests in early-stage B2B fintech and enterprise software companies modernizing financial services, announced today that it has closed its third investment fund. At US$101 million*, Information Venture Partners Fund III is backed by a number of Limited Partners who have invested with Information VP since its inception and include the five largest institutional fund of fund investors that support the Canadian venture capital ecosystem. The commitments also came from some of North America's top financial institutions, including: four of Canada's six largest banks, other financial institutions and insurers with Canadian, U.S. and global operations and executives from leading fintech companies.

"We are excited to announce the latest close of our third fund and are proud to be supported by a significant group of sophisticated repeat Limited Partners, and strategic Limited Partners including some of the leading financial institutions in North America," said Rob Antoniades, Co-Founder and General Partner at Information Venture Partners. "Our culture and operating style has made Information VP the partner of choice for early-stage companies providing solutions to the growing challenges facing financial services."

Information VP remains focused on four key areas: companies selling exclusively to banks, insurers, capital markets and asset managers, as well as horizontal SaaS companies selling to financial institutions as a key vertical and finally cybersecurity and financial software.

The company continues to make strategic investments in early-stage start-ups led by committed founders tackling industry issues and driving innovation. Recent investments include:

  • Arteria AI, the global leader in enterprise digital contracting;
  • Cinchy, the Dataware platform that makes integration obsolete;
  • Empyrean Solutions, a leading provider of asset and liability management and risk and compliance solutions;
  • Jirav, a cloud-based solution provider for business planning software; and
  • Thoughtexchange, the most advanced platform for scaling conversations.

"Information Venture Partners immediately impressed us with the depth of knowledge they had in financial software, and their previous success in the sector made it an easy decision for us to partner with this team," said Martin Zych, CEO of Jirav, a Fund III company. "Since the investment, their team has consistently provided beneficial entrepreneur guidance and advice that we have come to rely on."

In Q1 2021, the firm delivered a second fully realized investment fund for its Limited Partners at a performance level well above industry benchmarks. Verafin, the market leader in financial crime detection and investigation software, was sold to Nasdaq for $2.75 billion. The acquisition was a bittersweet triumph for the Information VP team having partnered with Verafin since 2009.

The last year also saw several of the firm's Fund II portfolio companies scale including:

  • BigID, in the data protection space, achieved unicorn status with its $70M financing round, led by Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Global;
  • Q4 Inc. entered into a strategic alliance to transition S&P Global Market Intelligence's Investor Relations web hosting business to Q4 in early 2020; and
  • Coconut Software, a customer engagement platform for Financial Services, announced 100% sales growth for 2020 and a tripling of their annual recurring revenue over 15 months.

"Information Venture Partners has proven over and over again that they were indeed the right choice to lead our Series A," said Katherine Regnier, Founder and CEO at Coconut Software From the moment I met Dave and his team, I knew this firm was one that operated with respect and integrity without bias on gender or location. They bring an outstanding toolkit of skills, network and know-how to the table. The firm's high value-add has bolstered our company's success and even my own personal development as a CEO".

"Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide VC funding proved to be resilient, reaching $300 billion last year -- a four percent increase from 2019. We're proud to close Fund III, which is 25% larger than Fund II, at a time when we continue to see a strong uptick in demand for fintech funding," said Dave Unsworth, Co-Founder and General Partner at Information Venture Partners. "Looking to the future, we remain very optimistic about our core investment thesis areas and we're grateful for the confidence investors and entrepreneurs have placed in us and we will continue to work diligently to scale businesses as we emerge from this once-in-a-generation pandemic."

With the growth of assets under management at the firm and a strong uptick in deal flow over the last year, Information VP has prioritized investing in and expanding their team. In the last year, Information VP announced the promotion of Alex Tong from Associate to Principal and added the following strategic hires:Jane Podbelskaya as Principal, Hasan Basrai as Associate, Sara Defina as Director of Finance, and Peter Carrescia as Venture Partner.

The Information VP team brings 70 years of combined venture investing experience and domain expertise in fintech and enterprise software. The firm was founded in 2014 by its General Partners, Rob Antoniades and Dave Unsworth, and joined by Kerri Golden who has been a Partner and CFO since its inception.

* All figures are in USD

About Information Venture Partners

‍Information Venture Partners is a Toronto-based team of experienced venture capital investors focused on backing the next generation of leaders in B2B FinTech and Enterprise SaaS. Current investments include Arteria AI, BigID, Cinchy, Coconut Software, Empyrean Solutions, Flybits, Jirav, Knowtions, LendingFront, PostBeyond, Procurify, Q4, Sensibill and Thoughtexchange. For more information, please visit www.informationvp.com.

Contact Information:
Laura Grace Pustmueller
Caliber Corporate Advisers
[email protected]
888.550.6385 ext.12

SOURCE: Information Venture Partners

Topic:
Company Update
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