Index Ventures

June 13, 2011 in Europe, Investment Firms

In theory, the goals of a venture capitalist and that of the business he or she is investing in is rather straightforward. The venture capitalists want to put in their money in a viable business, watch it grow and either exit at a profit or continue to earn through a regular dividend. For the business owner, the capital injection will offer the resources necessary to expand and reach targets that would have otherwise have taken them years to meet.

While this is true, in reality the relationships and objectives vary from one venture capitalist to another. There have also been instances where businesses have ended up the worse after the entry of venture capitalists into the fray. Index Ventures is one venture capitalist firm that has sought to carve a unique niche in the market. Index Ventures places strong emphasis on partnership and team support in any business the firm invests in.

The firm seeks to partner with ambitious entrepreneurs with a strong desire to build companies that will become champions. Index Ventures looks for companies that have the strong potential of influencing the global market in their area of specialization. Companies that are focused on solving known problems with a new, creative approach are particularly attractive for Index Ventures.

With offices in London and Geneva, the Index Ventures is biased towards businesses based in Europe. Though no industry is off the table, the firm mainly focuses on businesses dealing with life sciences and technology products or services. In particular, businesses that are already in or are contemplating venturing into the web based money transfer market are now at the top of the preference list.

 

The sectors that Index Ventures has opted to target are informed by the expertise of the firm’s management and advisors. In addition, Index Ventures does not consider any business that would be a direct competitor to any business the firm is already invested in. Investment plans begin from a quarter million Euro to 50 million Euros.

To manage risk and ensure goals are tracked and achieved, the funds are released in stages. The stages can loosely be classified as seed funding, early stage funding and late stage funding. The funds may be for the purposes of accelerating growth or simply to serve as a much needed cash injection to stabilize cash flows.

Index Ventures prefers simple business plans. In fact, according to the firm, if a plan cannot be broken into two sentences then it is complex. It takes up to six weeks for a final decision to be made after a thorough analysis of the viability of the business plan.

Businesses will be glad to know that unlike many other venture capitalists, Index Ventures is not after controlling the companies it invests in. Rather, the firm’s primary aim is to support founders and dialogue with clients to come up with a winning business formula. But this is not to say that the firm takes a hands-off approach – engagements will be intense and targets are aggressively tracked.

Current Startups Investments featured on smartideabox.com:

4 responses to Index Ventures

  1. Intersting! I am waiting for info on more private equity firms, why don’t you do a post on Sequoia? I think they are the number one in that business. Look up for the article that fortune did on them last year.

  2. My Goal is to try and link every spotted idea with their funding partners. Sequoia is on the way. I just need to find a better way to standardize the way we describe those firms. But I guess we could pull some information from crunchbase but be more complete in the company descriptions (I think the ones available on crunchbase are too meager).

  3. Well since you speak about investments, then the meaningful information is the total capital invested and the performance history. But this is surely much confidential.

  4. Well I saw it differently. If you describe each VC firm and all their investments. And on top of that you describe their expertise and and vision. I think it will maybe be help certain people to know who to approach first for exemple. I don’t really care how much money they make. I only really care if they managed the companies they invested in or coached at an early stage became successful. What do you think?

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