Launchbay Capital – a leading multi-stage investment firm committed to creating liquidity in the venture ecosystem – recently announced the first close of its new $100 million VC secondary growth fund with over 25% committed by a group of early investors. This also marks a strategic rebrand from its former namesake (Digital Horizon) to reflect the evolution from a primarily early-stage VC to a multi-stage data platform-driven fund manager.
Launchbay Capital’s secondary growth fund will create liquidity in growth-stage venture-backed technology companies with potential exits in three to four years. The fund utilizes the team’s venture expertise and extensive knowledge of private capital markets to enable active management of growth investments that yield high accelerated actual returns for founders, businesses, and investors.
Driven by a globally diverse team of seasoned professionals who spearheaded early investments in significant brands like Klarna, Lemonade, Monday.com, etc., Launchbay Capital’s strategy for success is rooted in investment discipline, rigorous data analysis, and active portfolio management. These founding principles and a proven track record allow the firm to operate with the agility and resilience required to execute investment solutions through the market cycles successfully.
By assessing the underlying fundamentals of the venture business via a proprietary data platform, looking beyond trends, and having an in-house brokerage exit-focused team, Launchbay Capital designed a fit-for-purpose investment structure that takes advantage of liquidity windows and capital redistribution at every stage of investing. Unlike traditional VC investments that span several decades, Launchbay Capital’s secondary growth fund operates on an investment period of four years, enabling investors to realize returns tactically, recycle capital promptly, and access secondary exit opportunities in addition to traditional avenues like IPO or M&A.
Launched in 2018 as Digital Horizon, Launchbay Capital now manages over $300 million in assets, encompassing an impressive portfolio of 55+ leading and privately held global technology companies spanning fintech, SaaS, AI healthcare, and more. Having successfully led five exits in just three years, the firm places utmost importance on offering strategies that result in capital recycling that will propel venture businesses to pre-2020 levels. And its early stage access fund targets late Seed and Series A funding rounds across fintech and software infrastructure. At the same time, its proprietary direct digital investment platform provides access to securities of leading global technology companies in the private markets space.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re forging the future of growth equity investments. With increasing complexities of private markets, it is our mission to provide our limited partners with price transparency and liquidity. Our data-driven valuation methodology allows us to be fully transparent with prices and create accurate, fast-paced roadmaps to liquidity and capital recirculation, both of which are more essential within the current inflationary, post-pandemic market.”
“Traditional VC growth investments continue to face challenges with valuation transparency, long durations and limited liquidity – all issues we believe our new secondary growth fund meets head on. Investors are no longer interested in having their money tied up for decades without valuation transparency and any non-paper return in sight,” said Vaksman. “We write smaller tickets and target growth-stage, venture-backed companies to enable diversification and broader investor participation, but also to facilitate faster exits through the secondary market itself to provide the capital flexibility today’s industry currently lacks.”
— Alan Vaksman, founding partner at Launchbay Capital
