Commerce Ventures – a leading venture firm focused on innovations across retail and financial services – announced it has closed an oversubscribed fifth fund exceeding $150 million in committed capital. Launched in 2013, Commerce Ventures was the first venture firm built to invest in the platforms and infrastructure that enable the digitization of industry incumbents and the creation of new challenger brands across the Commerce Continuum. And since being founded inception, the firm has invested in over 100 companies, including category leaders like Bill.com, Canary, Candex, Forter, FleetOps, Kevel, Kin, Marqeta (MQ), Mudflap, MX, Narvar, Socure, Trove and Vestwell.
At the core of the strategy is its ability to leverage a proprietary ecosystem of strategic investors. And these investors include nine of the largest US banks, two of the country’s largest retailers, three leading global insurers, and several of the world’s leading payment platforms. Working closely with these partners, the firm developed dozens of unique thematic analyses, identified many category-leading innovators, and generated dozens of commercial partnerships.
The firm also works with nearly 100 strategic individual investors, including 12 current and former public company CEOs and more than 30 portfolio leaders. And with the firm’s unique set of strategic investors, all of its institutional allocators returned for Fund V, including leading firms like Franklin Park, Industry Ventures, and StepStone Group. Since its inception, financial investors in Commerce Ventures’ funds have also committed more than $100 million to portfolio co-investments, making them critical partners in the firm’s investing strategy.
Along with a partnership working together for over seven years, Commerce Ventures announced that long-time advisor Daniel Eckert will expand his involvement and serve as a Venture Partner with the new fund. And Daniel collaborated with the firm informally for many years while also running financial services and digital acceleration for Walmart during its omnichannel transformation and has been a Senior Advisor to Commerce Ventures for the past three years.
KEY QUOTES:
“Commerce Ventures has been a critical early part of the Socure Team, far beyond just as an investor, but also as a strategic thought partner, industry expert and source of commercial introductions that have led to $10s of millions worth of enterprise deals per year.”
– Johnny Ayers, Co-Founder and CEO of Socure
“We’re excited to continue our partnership with Commerce Ventures. Their insights on emerging trends have shaped our thinking, and we’ve ended up working closely with several of their portfolio companies.”
– Anton Hanebrink, Chief Corporate Strategy & Development Officer at Intuit
“While we are fortunate to have invested early in many of the industry’s leading platforms and enablers, we believe that transformational change in Retail and Financial Services has only just begun. We see an exciting new wave of founders building critical innovations for the future of our industry, and I am so grateful for the exceptional team and partners we’ve assembled to pursue the opportunity ahead of us.”
– Dan Rosen, Founder and Partner at Commerce Ventures
