Kennet Partners Newsletter – 7 exits and 5 New Deals
Welcome to Kennet Partners’ inaugural Newsletter of 2021. We use this newsletter to update on our portfolio company news and announce new deals. If you think anyone else might find our updates useful, please share.
Last year challenged many industries. Fortunately, the technology sector has proven its resilience. As corporates scrambled to advance their digital strategies to adopt to the shifting requirements of their customers and employees, startups and big technology players capitalised on the accelerating digital trends. 2021 will no doubt present many challenges, but we believe 2020 has created a step change in technology adoption and remain hopeful for another year of growth in 2021.
Exits
Kennet Partners Exits 7 Companies in 6 Months
In early March, it was announced that Kennet portfolio company, Nuxeo, is to be acquired by Hyland Software. This is Kennet’s 7th exit in the past 6 months.
Kennet and Goldman Sachs acquired Nuxeo in 2016. Nuxeo’s platform focuses on Digital Asset Management for companies with fast product life cycles such as media, fashion and consumer electronics, and Enterprise Content Management for financial institutions. Kennet and Goldman Sachs are expected to make a 5x return on their investment in Nuxeo.
New Deals
Nudge Partners with Kennet to Expand Global Operations
Nudge raised a growth equity round led by Kennet Partners. Nudge is a corporate financial wellbeing platform with a mission to empower employees to manage their finances. Global demand for financial wellbeing has skyrocketed in response to coronavirus' impact on the global economy, which has brought record-high levels of financial stress accentuated by inadequate levels of financial literacy.
Scoro, London Work Management Startup Raises $16m Funding
Scoro has secured $16.4 million Series B funding. Kennet Partners led the round alongside existing investors, including Columbia Lake Partners, Inventure, Livonia Partners and Tera Ventures. Scoro is a Work Management software business for professional services firms. Scoro works with the mission to combat ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction’.
Grip, Event Networking App Raises $13m
Kennet Partners led a $13m investment into Grip. Grip provides Smart Event Matchmaking Software for Virtual, Hybrid, and Live Events. With offline events now firmly moved to online for the foreseeable future, event organisers have been forced to adopt virtual platforms. We believe this digitisation trend will continue as future events embrace a hybrid offline / online approach.
Provar Raises a $17m Series A
Provar, the leading test automation platform for Salesforce, announced a $17m Series A led by Kennet Partners. Companies are increasingly investing in their approach to customer relationship management, leaning heavily into platforms like Salesforce to make data-driven decisions to help facilitate growth. This shift has rapidly accelerated the need for teams to build, test and deploy customized Salesforce functionality exponentially faster.
Onfleet Raises $14m to Power Last-mile Deliveries for Ecommerce Companies
Onfleet, a platform that provides last-mile delivery management tools to third parties, has raised $14m in a Series A round of funding led by Kennet Partners. The raise comes as demand for eCommerce and associated delivery services have gone through the roof due to the global pandemic, opening the door for companies such as Onfleet to serve as the logistics backbone for retailers wanting to capitalize on the rapid acceleration of online sales.
New Hires
Cillian Hilliard Joins Kennet Partners as Investment Director
Cillian Hilliard joins Kennet Partners from Atlantic Bridge where he focused on Enterprise SaaS and Deep Tech Hardware opportunities across US, China and Europe. His investments included AtScale, Caption Health, Ninebot and Decawave. Previously Cillian was an Investment Banking Associate at IBI Corporate Finance where he focused on Financial Services and Technology transactions. Cillian is a CFA Charter holder. He also received a First-Class Honours BSc in Economics & Finance from University College Dublin.
Kennet Partner’s Investment Target
Kennet Partners is a Growth Equity investor with over 20 years’ experience partnering with European and US SaaS companies. If you know any companies which fit our criteria, please reach out.
Investment size: $8m - $30m
Maturity: Over $3m in ARR
Type: Bootstrapped and capital efficient B2B SaaS businesses
Geography: Europe & US
Contact
• Michael Elias (melias@kennet.com)
• Hillel Zidel (hzidel@kennet.com)
• Cillian Hilliard (chilliard@kennet.com)
• Alex Taylor-Harris (ataylorharris@kennet.com)
Kennet Partners is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.