- BGV — an early-stage VC firm with a focus on enterprise 4.0 startups — announced it closed $70 million for the Opportunity Fund
BGV — an early-stage VC firm with deep Silicon Valley roots with a focus on enterprise 4.0 startups in global markets — recently announced that it closed $70 million for the Opportunity Fund. The Opportunity Fund was designed to make expansion stage investments in successful portfolio companies that emerge from both early-stage funds BGV II and BGV III.
Earlier this year, BGV made two Opportunity Fund investments in the enterprise 4.0 category including Totango and Virtual Instruments. And in May 2019, Zebra Technologies announced the acquisition of BGV Fund II company Profitect — which is a leading provider of prescriptive analytics for the retail and consumer packaged goods industries. And BGV returned 6.8X their investment to BGV Fund II limited partners.
“This sale showcases BGV’s thesis-driven approach of investing in Enterprise 4.0 startups solving business problems in specific vertical industries — in this case retail,” said Eric Buatois — a general partner at BGV and chairman of Profitect.
Profitect has many Enterprise 4.0 startup attributes that BGV is seeking in its investments including a cross-border company (founded in Israel) where BGV added value through early strategic partnerships and improved board governance and assembled a U.S. investor syndicate. Plus it is well-aligned with BGV’s investment thesis around the omni-channel digital transformation of retail. And it has a differentiated technology solution powered by AI applied to a novel data set along with intelligent automation to deliver a compelling value proposition. Profitect also has a CEO with substantial expertise in a specific industry.
BGV currently has 30 active companies in its portfolio. And the BGV team has successfully built and implemented a cross-border venture investing model with companies from Israel, Europe and Asia. Benhamou is also known as the former chairman and CEO of 3Com and Palm. And he is also the co-founder of Bridge Communications. Along with Benhamou, BGV’s partners include Anik Bose, Eric Buatois, Yashwanth Hemaraj, Amir Nayyerhabibi, Ron Sege, Marina Levinson, Barak Ben-Avinoam, Janice Roberts, Ikkei Matsuda, Masaru (Mas) Sakamoto, and Shuo Zhang.
