WHAT WE DO

Fog City Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early to mid-stage technology and services companies. Fog City partners with management to grow software and services firms into industry leaders. We combine our experience of founding and growing companies, with executive leadership skills running large organizations. Our networks and relationships in our industry focus areas, and a willingness to roll-up our sleeves to partner with management, helps us to rapidly scale organizations to build shareholder value.

Fog City's primary co-investor is Senvest Capital (SEC.TO), a publicly traded financial group.

OUR VALUE-ADD

Capital alone is a commodity. A truly value-added partner needs to provide much more. Fog City Capital differentiates itself from other Venture Capital firms in the depth of our team’s operating backgrounds and our willingness to roll up our sleeves with existing management to rapidly grow each business. The team brings their insights, networks and tactics to help take companies to the next level of success.

Self-sustaining growth is the foundation for long-term value creation. Fog City looks to enhance top-line growth by focusing on four major dimensions:

Sales & Marketing.
The Fog City team has decades of experience in positioning and selling multi-million dollar software and services contracts to Fortune 1000 clients using a combination of consultative solution selling, value-based pricing, and a strong network of personal contacts. They can bring clarity to identifying the most desirable customer segments while focusing on key client needs that are critical to winning and keeping accounts.

Global Expansion.
The Fog City team has a track record of helping companies access global markets both from a sales and an operating perspective. With deep relationships, particularly in Asia and Europe, Fog City can help businesses with joint ventures, structuring partnerships or with identifying the right merger or acquisition candidates to build an international presence.

Product & Technology Development.
The Fog City team has been very involved in technology innovation and development throughout its careers. In addition, they have strong relationships with the Venture Capital community in Silicon Valley. We can leverage these competencies to help companies build and develop technology and software that will improve customer acquisition, service and retention.

Add-on Acquisitions.
Fog City looks beyond each individual investment to assess opportunities for consolidation within the industry. We often look for multiple acquisition opportunities within an industry segment to create economies of scale, expand management capabilities, broaden product or service lines, or to gain entry into new geographies.

TEAM & ADVISORS

RAVI BHASKARAN, PARTNER

Ravi Bhaskaran has over 30 years experience in general management, business development, and corporate development. In his role as a Managing Partner at Fog City he has held a variety of operating and board roles in portfolio companies including Ad-Lib Digital, Visual IQ, Om Entertainment Group, Codeshelf, and SolutionSet. Earlier in his career, Mr. Bhaskaran was a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton. Mr. Bhaskaran has a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Chicago and London Business School.

ADIT ABHYANKAR, PARTNER

Adit was most recently CEO at one of Fog City's portfolio companies, Ad-Lib.io prior to its acquisition by Smartly.io. He was previously at Google for 5 years where he led the team selling Google´s enterprise marketing analytics products across Continental Europe and Emerging Markets. Prior to that, Adit worked in 5 startups in the US and Europe as owner/entrepreneur/investor, including as Executive Director at Visual IQ (a Fog City investment) and as CFO at SolutionSet (another Fog City investment). He graduated summa cum laude and at the top of his class with an M.S. in Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Economics from Tulane University. Mr. Abhyankar speaks six languages and lives between the SF Bay Area and Madrid, Spain.

RON VANDENBERG, ADVISOR

Ron Vandenberg is a Co-Founder of BluLab, a next-generation creative agency focused on helping build the next visionary brands. Ron Vandenberg is a leader in the practice of creative thinking, writing, design and film. His work is inspired by the legacy of our best practitioners and firms. These firms include Siegel+Gale, Fitch and FutureBrand. Ron is honored to have worked as a creative leader with all three. He is a founding partner of FutureBrand, Blue Mint and Merchant. Ron's work as a designer has been recognized with multiple industry awards including an unprecedented Gold, Silver and Bronze CLIO, awarded simultaneously. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School Executive Program and Executive Creative Director of the iconic movie studio, RKO Pictures. Ron has been a leader and mentor to creative and business teams who have built a portfolio of legendary brands and has lectured at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to co-founding BluLab, Ron was Executive Creative Director at SGK, Merchant, and Blue Mint.

MICHAEL LAVEN, ADVISOR

Michael is currently CEO of CurrencyCloud. Mr. Laven has extensive experience building, growing and leading successful technology firms in both Silicon Valley and Europe. He was previously COO of Traiana, which was acquired by ICAP for $247 million. Prior to Traiana he was the CEO of Iris Financial, a provider of equity and fixed income security trading systems; he led Iris’ buy-out by Apax Partners, a London-based private equity fund. Previously, he worked alongside Insight Capital Partners, a late-stage venture capital fund, on an investment in KW International, a London-based supplier of trading and risk management solutions. He then joined KWI as COO. Prior to KWI, Mr. Laven was President and CEO of Cohera, a developer of e-procurement solutions based in Silicon Valley, which raised $20 million in capital from major venture funds including Sequoia, Accel, Sippl-McDonald and Merrill Lynch and was subsequently acquired by PeopleSoft in 2000. Prior to Cohera, Mr. Laven was CEO of Infinity Financial Technology, a provider of risk management and trading software which held its IPO in 1997 and was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 1998. He became the President of SunGard’s Trading and Risk Systems Division following the acquisition. Mr. Laven has also held other executive positions in both Europe and the US; he received his B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. from the School for International Training, and a M.Ed. from Harvard University.

OUR STRATEGY

Fog City Capital partners with management to grow business services and software firms into industry leaders. We combine our experience of founding and growing companies to take an active role with management in developing and executing a winning growth strategy. We fund companies that require growth capital as well as those undergoing transition. We will consider both control and significant minority investment opportunities.

Criteria for investments include:

Revenues - from $2M to $30M ARR

Equity Investment Size - from $5M to $20M

Industry Focus - Internet Marketing Value Chain, Enterprise Software/SaaS, Applied AI Tools & Applications, Tech Enabled Business Services

INVESTMENTS

FCTRY LAB (Invested Oct 2022)

Fctry LAb is a high-tech sneaker creation lab in Los Angeles helping creators across entertainment Sports, and business build their brands through footwear. Our black-led team of industry experts with specialized technology, and manufacturing knowhow, offers and independent alternative to Big Sneaker to empower creators with more control and ownership than ever before.

Seed Financing was provided by Fog City.

AD-LIB.IO (acquired by Smartly.io in Jan 2022)

Ad-Lib.io provides brands with two unique streams of capabilities - creative management platforms (CMP) for building and versioning audience-driven creative, and dynamic creative optimization (DCO) for real time, feed-based ad assembly and on-the-fly optimization of product and messaging in a single consolidated stack.

Growth Financing was provided by Fog City.

VISUAL IQ (acquired by Nielsen in Sept 2017)

Visual IQ is the leading provider of enterprise software for next-generation marketing investment decision support. The company's software-as-a-service analytics solutions help marketers and agencies improve return on marketing investments with performance insights across the complex and ever-expanding media mix.

Growth Financing was led by Fog City Capital.

SOLUTIONSET (now a part of Publicis)

SolutionSet, is a branding and technology company that helps its clients develop rich internet applications and interactive marketing solutions.

Recapitalization and Growth Financing was led by Fog City Capital.

CONTACT US

In the new normal, we work virtually out of multiple global locations.

If you would like to refer a deal to us that meets our investment criteria, we would love to talk to you about how Fog City Capital can add value.

Please submit a deal idea by sending us an email at deals@fogcitycapital.com

(c) Fog City Capital | photo (c) by Jay Huang