The second quarter of 2024 proved to be the busiest quarter in our firms history. We completed 7 transactions in the quarter including 2 markups, 3 follow-ons, one new investment, and one special purpose vehicle (SPV). Our funds' performance remains strong and our companies are well capitalized to navigate the market ahead.
In addition to our new and follow-on investments, we hosted our first in-person Annual General Meeting (AGM) in San Francisco. We enjoyed the great weather that the city offered and were thrilled to bring our community together. More on the event below. 👇
🌁 Acadian Ventures Annual General Meeting
In June, we hosted our Acadian VenturesAnnual General Meeting(AGM) in San Francisco, California. The gathering brought together our founders, co-investors, limited partners, and friends to share, collaborate and discuss the future ahead. The event featured speakers from many of our portfolio companies and also including executives from companies including ADP, Apple, Cornerstone, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Stanford University, and Workday. Check out Thomas' summary of the event here and photos can be found on our Linkedin page here. You can also see write-ups from Claire McTaggart (here), Sunil Grover (here), and Rick van Echtelt (here).
📰 Techwolf Raises $43M Series B
We're thrilled to announce our Acadian Ventures portfolio company, TechWolf, has raised a $43M Series B led by Felix Capital. We are excited to continue to support the company alongside strategic partners including SAP, ServiceNow Ventures, Workday Ventures and other notable investors including 20VC, Fortino Capital, Notion Capital, PMV, SemperVirens, and Stride.VC. TechWolf provides AI-powered skills infrastructure to help enterprises establish an automatic, instant, and always up-to-date view of skills and skill gaps across their workforce. They have built a highly specialized skills AI system, spanning 15 proprietary language models and outperforming external language models in accuracy, transparency, and flexibility. Read more about the Series B round in Techcrunch and Business Insider. You can also learn more about why we invested again in Thomas' blog post and watch Harry Stebbings discuss 20VC's investment here.
🇺🇸 Our Investment in SquarePeg
We are excited to announce a new, yet announced investment in SquarePeg. SquarePeg is a SaaS-based recruiting automation platform that helps companies source, screen, manage, and hire the right talent, faster. The $3.5M seed round was led by Next Frontier Capital with participation from VITALIZE, Bread & Butter Ventures, and FullCircle. The company today is using AI to deliver three core products -- talent sourcing, application screening, and market intelligence. Learn more about SquarePeg here.
🇩🇪 Acadian Ventures in Berlin
Thomas Otter recently spent a few weeks in Berlin, spending time with portfolio companies, meeting with co-investors, and attending the PersonalManagement Kongress event. Read more about the event and an update from his visit with Acadian Ventures portfolio company, Kombo. You can find more photos of his visit here.
🇲🇽 Worky Raises Series A
Acadian Ventures portfolio company, Worky, recently closed their $6M Series A led by Atlantico with participation from ADP Ventures. Worky is a cloud-based human resource and payroll software platform primarily used by mid-sized companies across Mexico. When we first invested in Worky's Seed round in 2022, founders Maya Dadoo and Carlos Marina had an ambitious vision to modernize how companies recruit, manage and pay their employees across Latin America. Worky has subsequently released Worky Payroll, Mexico’s first cloud-native payroll solution along with robust shift management capabilities. These new solutions helped drive accelerated growth and user adoption in 2023, bringing new levels of operational efficiency to their customers. Read more about Worky's announcement here.
🙌 Welcome Jackson Malary to Acadian Ventures
We are excited to welcome Jackson Malary to our Summer Associate Program. Jackson is a rising Junior at St Lawrence University, currently studying Economics and Statistics. In addition to his studies, Jackson is a defensive specialist for the Men's Soccer team. Please join us in welcoming Jackson to Acadian Ventures and connect with him on Linkedin.
📣 Latest Musings From the Newsletter
A few of Thomas' recent blog posts this past quarter...
Acadian Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm that invests in founders who are leading the work revolution and reimagining how people work in the future. The firm was founded in 2019 and led by Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter, both seasoned operators that have scaled publicly-traded global businesses into market leaders. Acadian Ventures invests globally across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. You can find more information at www.acadianventures.com.
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