January 15, 2013 (Santa Monica, CA) — As we begin 2013, we take time to welcome 5 new companies to our Siemer Ventures portfolio that joined us last quarter, bringing our total new investments for 2012 to 24. We also had one successful exit in CloudTrigger. Our second fund, Siemer Ventures II, LP, now comprises a total of 39 digital media and technology startups.
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Siemer Ventures’ Investment Criteria
We invest in early-stage tech companies positioned for rapid growth that are run by remarkable entrepreneurs with deep domain expertise. These companies typically target large, fragmented and high-growth markets with unique and differentiated products and services. We prefer to work with emerging companies that have already taken their product or service to market, or are on the verge of doing so. We seek out companies that have outstripped the funding capabilities of their early investors but aren’t yet ready for a conventional venture capital funding round. We are comfortable in bridging this funding gap that most emerging companies experience in their early evolution, having experienced it ourselves in our former operating lives. As such, we typically invest up to $750K per venture, with our initial investment size ranging from $150K to $350K, as part of a larger investment syndicate.
Additionally, Siemer Ventures co-founded and sponsors a Singaporean incubator fund, WaveMaker Labs, which is an Approved Technology Incubator under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS) of the Singaporean government’s National Research Foundation (NRF). Under the TIS, WaveMaker enjoys a 6x leverage on its investment capital with the NRF providing up to US$400,000 per startup on top of the US$70,000 WaveMaker invests per company. This means each startup that WaveMaker supports receives US$470,000 of seed funding at the outset. With this, WaveMaker aims to catalyze the formation of value-creating technology businesses right at the heart of Southeast Asia’s 600 million consumers and the 2 billion more in nearby India and China. WaveMaker is supported by Siemer & Associates, enabling WaveMaker to support its startups throughout their life cycle from incubation to follow on funding to exit.
