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New Venture Capital Firm Announces Market-Focused Investment Strategy, Portfolio and First Fund
[September 01, 2015]

New Venture Capital Firm Announces Market-Focused Investment Strategy, Portfolio and First Fund


San Francisco-based venture capital firm Cloud Apps Capital Partners today announced its market-focused investment strategy targeting early-stage companies in the cloud business applications sector, and its first fund. Founded by former salesforce.com executive and venture capitalist Matt Holleran, the firm takes an innovative approach to supporting early-stage companies. Leveraging more than 20 years of combined investing and operating experience in the business applications market, Cloud Apps Capital Partners is able to help portfolio companies with market-specific expertise and a rich network of cloud industry executives and experts.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150901005444/en/

Matt Holleran, General Partner, Cloud Apps Capital Partners (Photo: Business Wire)

Matt Holleran, General Partner, Cloud Apps Capital Partners (Photo: Business Wire)

Market-Focused Investment Strategy

Matt Holleran, general partner of Cloud Apps Capital, and his team have decades of operational and go-to-market experience building and investing in category-leading business software companies. This first-hand product, sales, marketing and business-development experience distinguishes the firm in its ability to evaluate and invest in cloud business app companies ahead of market traction: Investing and engaging pre-traction helps entrepreneurs accelerate and maximize their business potential during the critical early stage. Cloud Apps Capital Partners leads Classic Series A financings of $2 million to $4 million and provides full board support, which gives entrepreneurs the right amount of funding along with operational guidance from an experienced and engaged investment firm. The firm's Classic Series A investment strategy helps entrepreneurs build global, category-leading companies in the enterprise Softare-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) application market that is expected to generate more than $50 billion by 2018.



Oversubscribed First Fund

Cloud Apps Capital Partners has closed more than $50 million in an oversubscribed first fund, raised from leading institutional investors, technology executives and investors. Cloud Apps Capital Partners is different from most early-stage firms in that 75 percent of its first fund is derived from institutional investors, who typically do not invest in first funds. Cloud Apps Capital's first fund will reserve for follow-on financings and includes a co-investment structure to support portfolio companies' growth throughout each company's lifecycle with capital from leading institutional investors.


Cloud Business Applications Focused Portfolio

To date the firm has invested in seven companies, all examples of cloud business application companies and its investment strategy. The portfolio includes:

  • Hootsuite, the leading global social media management platform;
  • ServiceMax, the leading field service management software provider and a pioneer of an enterprise cloud company that has become the global category leader;
  • Insightly, the business freemium CRM leader, which helps hundreds of thousands of companies around the world manage their customers;
  • Dasheroo, a business freemium company solving a global need for easy-to-use business dashboards; and
  • GoFormz, a mobile enterprise platform that makes it easy for business users to modernize how they work.

Supporting Quotes:

Matt Holleran, General Partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners

"The venture market today is not optimized for cloud business application companies. New business application companies require more capital and more board support than the seed market can provide. Large venture firms would like to see more traction prior to investing. We know firsthand what it takes to build category-leading business application companies, and we help the entrepreneur to put the fundamentals in place to be successful. We are leading a change in the venture industry with our market-focused Classic Series A approach, and we expect to see more new market-focused venture firms in other categories."

Stephen Vicinelli, Managing Director at The Investment Fund for Foundations ("TIFF")

"TIFF is focused on offering our endowment and foundation clients access to highly regarded, early-stage venture capital investors. We believe Cloud Apps Capital is uniquely positioned to take advantage of innovation in the business application market."

Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax: Cloud Apps Capital Portfolio Company

"Cloud Apps Capital's experience and insights into the cloud business software market have been very helpful over the years. They fully understand the power and potential that new cloud business applications have to change the business landscape, and are as excited and committed as we are to make it happen."

About Cloud Apps Capital Partners

Cloud Apps Capital Partners is a market-focused venture capital firm helping early-stage companies in cloud business application markets build the next generation of global, category-leading businesses. The firm has more direct industry, operational and investing experience in building global cloud business application companies than any other early-stage venture capital firm. For entrepreneurs, this translates into unparalleled access to business-model knowledge, a network of impact executives, relationships with leading cloud companies and the optimal funding model to lay the right foundation to build a global category-leading company.


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