Index Ventures is a European

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm with dual headquarters in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

fintech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are r ...

, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

''’

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameters ...

of the top tech investors in Europe and

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

History

Index Ventures has its origins in a Swiss

bond Bond or bonds may refer to: Common meanings * Bond (finance), a type of debt security * Bail bond, a commercial third-party guarantor of surety bonds in the United States * Chemical bond, the attraction of atoms, ions or molecules to form chemica ...

-trading firm called Index Securities, founded by Gerald Rimer in 1976. In 1992, Rimer recruited his son, Neil, to join the firm, and together they launched its technology investment arm, which would evolve into an independent entity, Index Ventures. Index Ventures was officially founded in 1996 by

Neil Rimer Neil Rimer is founding partner at Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in Europe, the United States, and Israel. He is co-chair of the Board of Directors at Human Rights Watch. Early life and education Rimer was born in Montreal, ...

, David Rimer and Giuseppe Zocco, when they raised a pilot fund of $17 million, followed by a $180 million fund in 1998. Index Ventures began investing in Israel in 2003. By 2005, Index's third fund raised 300 million euros; just two years later, it raised a further 350 million euros for its fourth found, which targeted to spend 15 to 20% on Israeli companies. The sixth fund raised 350 million euros from investors in 2012 and was targeted for European,

U.S The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

., and Israeli tech startups. Index's seventh fund launched in 2017, raising 400 million from investors. It was aimed at new companies in Europe, the U.S., and Israel. In fact, by this time the company defined its focus as London, San Francisco,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, New York, Stockholm,

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...

and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. From early on, the firm launched a life sciences practice, which in 2016 it spun off as an independent venture capital firm, Medicxi Ventures. Index Ventures' dual headquarters in San Francisco and London were opened in 2011 and 2002, respectively.

Partners

The firm's nine investment partners are Sarah Cannon, Mark Goldberg, Jan Hammer, Martin Mignot,

Danny Rimer Danny Rimer OBE (born 1970) is a partner at Index Ventures, a global venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1992. Rimer opened the firm's London office in 2002 and its San Francisco office in 2012. He has become a leading voice on venture capi ...

, Shardul Shah,

Dominique Vidal Dominique Vidal is a partner at Index Ventures, a global venture capital firm with offices in London, Geneva and San Francisco. He was formerly managing director of Yahoo! Europe. Early life and education Vidal was born in Narbonne, in southern F ...

, and

Mike Volpi Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi (born 13 December 1966) is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He worked as an engineer, eventually becoming chief strategy officer at Cisco Systems during the company’s growth era, acquiring over ...

. The firm also has an operating partner, Bernard Dalle.

Awards

Danny Rimer was named to '' Fortune's'' "40 under 40" list in 2009, the

of the top 25 deal makers in

, and the '' New York Times''' list of the top 20 venture capitalists from 2016 to 2018. Neil Rimer was named the number one venture capitalist in Europe in ''Forbes''' inaugural

Europe 2017. The 2018 ''Forbes''' Global

of the world's top venture capitalists featured Neil Rimer and Jan Hammer, and the 2018 ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' list of the top venture capitalists worldwide featured four Index partners: Danny Rimer (number 17), Mike Volpi (number 34), Neil Rimer, and Jan Hammer.

Investments

Index Ventures raised several venture funds, including Index Ventures I through VIII and Index Growth 1, 2 and 3. In 2018 the firm raised a total of $1.65 billion for an early-stage investment fund and a growth fund. Examples include: *

Betfair Betfair is a British gambling company which operates the world's largest online betting exchange. Its product offering also includes sports betting, online casino, online poker, and online bingo. Founded in 2000, the business is split int ...

, now

Flutter Entertainment Flutter Entertainment plc (formerly Paddy Power Betfair plc) is an Irish gambling holding company created by the merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, and the later acquisition of The Stars Group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is ...

* Bird Company * Blue Bottle Coffee (acquired by

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...

for $425 million) *

Criteo Criteo is an advertising company that provides online display advertisements. The company was founded and is headquartered in Paris, France. History Criteo was founded in Paris, France, in 2005 by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Franck Le Ouay and Romain ...

* CodeAcademy *

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 ...

* Duo Security (being acquired by

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

for $2.35 billion) *

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

IZettle Zettle by PayPal (previously known as iZettle) is a Swedish financial technology company founded by Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson in April 2010. Launching its first app and service in 2011, the company offers a range of financial products in ...

(acquired by

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

for $2.2bn) *

Just Eat Just Eat (formerly known legally as Just Eat plc) is an online food order and delivery brand of Netherlands-based Just Eat Takeaway.com, and a former food delivery company. Just Eat was founded as a separate company in 2001 in Kolding, Denmark ...

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

(held an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

, subsequently acquired by

Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. (the publicly traded parent company of Activision Publishing) and Viven ...

for $5.9 billion) *

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

(acquired by

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

for $280 million) * Moleskin *

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

(acquired by Sun Microsystems, now part of Oracle, for $1 billion) *

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

(acquired by

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

for $2.6 billion and later acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

for $8.5 billion). * Sonos *

Supercell A supercell is a thunderstorm characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone: a deep, persistently rotating updraft. Due to this, these storms are sometimes referred to as rotating thunderstorms. Of the four classifications of thunderstorms ( ...

(acquired by

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...

for $8.6 billion) * Trello (acquired by

Atlassian Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Austra ...

for $425 million) *

Wiz Wiz may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Wizard (MUD), or wiz, a developer or administrator of Multi-User Dungeon game *"Wiz" Zumwalt, the hero of a series of novels by Rick Cook * Wiz (''KonoSuba''), a character in the light novel series ''Kon ...

* Zendesk *

Zuora Zuora is an American enterprise software company headquartered in Redwood City, California that creates and provides software for businesses to launch and manage their subscription-based services. Zuora's applications are designed to automate re ...

Other investments include

Adyen Adyen is a Dutch payment company with status of an acquiring bank that allows businesses to accept e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payments. It is listed on the stock exchange Euronext. Adyen offers merchants online services for merchan ...

, Abacus.AI, Aurora, Citymapper,

Deliveroo Deliveroo is a British online food delivery company founded by Will Shu and Greg Orlowski in 2013 in London, England. It operates in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait ...

, Farfetch, Funding Circle, Gatsby,

Intercom An intercom, also called an intercommunication device, intercommunicator, or interphone, is a stand-alone voice communications system for use within a building or small collection of buildings which functions independently of the public telephon ...

Motorway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

Notion Notion or Notions may refer to: Software * Notion (music software), a music composition and performance program * Notion (productivity software), a note-taking and project-management program from Notion Labs Inc. * Notion (window manager), the s ...

Patreon Patreon (, ) is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a com ...

, Personio, Plaid,

Revolut Revolut is a British financial technology company that offers banking services, but did not have a UK banking licence. Headquartered in London, it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers accounts featuring currency ...

, Robinhood,

Roblox ''Roblox'' () is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released i ...

, Ubiquity6, and Slack.

References

External links

Index Ventures
(company website) {{Private equity and venture capital Financial services companies established in 1996 Venture capital firms of the United States Companies based in San Francisco Venture capital firms of the United Kingdom

History

Partners

Awards

Investments

References

Further reading

External links