Vertical Venture Partners Announces Three Liquidity Events in Q4 2020
February 3, 2021 – Palo Alto, CA – 2020 was a challenging year for us all, and first and foremost, the VVP Partners hope that everyone is happy and healthy. Despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, 2020 proved to be a very successful year for the firm. VVP had liquidity events in three portfolio companies, which produced outstanding returns for the firm and its Limited Partners. VVP I’s DPI (Distributed to Paid In) as of December 31st, 2020, is 2.3X, which ranks VVP I well above the 95% percentile for US Venture Funds. (The DPI data from the Burgiss iQ benchmark for 2014 vintage US VC funds is: DPI top quartile: 0.5X and DPI 95th percentile: 1.4X). Liquidity event details below:
• Zipari was bought by PE firm Thoma Bravo. VVP was the original Seed investor and we also led Series A and B rounds. VVP Partner Dave Schwab served as Chairman of the company since the original investment. Congratulations to Zipari CEO, Mark Nathan, and the entire Zipari team. VVP continues to hold ownership in Zipari and we look forward to a successful 2021. ZIPARI RELEASE: NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zipari, the company behind the first and only consumer experience platform built specifically for health insurance, today announced a strategic growth investment from Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sector. Through this investment valuing the company at more than half a billion dollars, Zipari will combine with Healthx, a provider of trusted healthcare engagement technologies, to create the leading CX platform and solutions for health insurance payers and third-party administrators. Mark Nathan, Founder and CEO of Zipari, will continue to lead the business. The company will remain headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.
• SOCi completed a major PE funding round of $80M with PE firm JMI that included a substantial secondary sale and VVP participated in that secondary. VVP co-led the Series A and also participated in the Series B and C. VVP Partners Dave Schwab and Brad Corona led VVP’s efforts with SOCi. Dave Schwab continues to serve on the SOCi Board. Afif Khoury, SOCi CEO, has built a very exciting company leading the organization through multiple product expansion and go-to-market expansion efforts. VVP continues to hold a position in SOCi and we are excited about 2021. SOCi RELEASE: SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SOCi, the leading all-in-one marketing platform built for multi-location marketers, today announced it has closed a Series D investment round of $80 million, led by JMI Equity (“JMI”), a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading enterprise software companies. With this funding, SOCi plans to significantly accelerate its growth, with investments in its sales and marketing teams, an aggressive lineup of product innovations, and strategic M&A activity.
• Intabio was acquired by SCIEX, a global leader in life science analytical technologies and a division of Danaher. Intabio is the first exit from our Life Science Tools practice, one of the healthcare practice areas headed by VVP Partner Paul Conley. VVP continues to hold positions in multiple companies in this sector and we look forward to sharing more results. INTABIO RELEASE: FRAMINGHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SCIEX, a global leader in life science analytical technologies, announced the closing of its acquisition of Intabio, Inc., a privately held company and the developer of the Blaze™ System for biotherapeutic analysis and quality assessment. Blaze enables the direct coupling of imaged cIEF charge variant analysis with high-resolution mass spectrometry to detect intact proteins.
About Vertical Venture Partners
Vertical Venture Partners (“VVP”) is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm focused on making Seed and Series A investments in B2B technology companies targeting pain points in specific vertical sectors as opposed to those providing horizontal technologies to many industries. The VVP team has decades of operating and investment experience gained from diverse backgrounds in venture capital, research & development, investment banking, and advanced technology.
Please visit www.vvp.vc to learn more.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Media contact: Doreen Thawley; doreen@vvp.vc