MuleSoft Inc. founder Ross Mason is seeking investment for a $100 million venture capital fund to back software startups at their earliest stages of development.
(Bloomberg) — MuleSoft Inc. founder Ross Mason is seeking investment for a $100 million venture capital fund to back software startups at their earliest stages of development.
After selling enterprise software company MuleSoft to Salesforce Inc. for about $6.5 billion in 2018, Mason has since invested his own funds into startups under the banner of his family office, Dig Ventures. After generating around a 50% rate of return on his first $50 million fund, Mason is now staffing up and raising a second fund backed by institutional investors, Mason told Bloomberg.
London-based Dig has brought on as partners Rytis Vitkauskas, formerly of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and entrepreneur Scott Grimes to join Mason and former MuleSoft employee Melissa Lester.
Dig will focus its investments on European business-to-business software companies, building core infrastructure tools in areas such as security, privacy, machine learning and analytics, the firm’s partners said.
“These businesses are very stable, they tend to be in the heart of businesses, they don’t get ripped out very easily so they have a lot of longevity,” Mason said.
Dig Ventures has already backed two startups whose valuations have surpassed $1 billion: revenue-intelligence platform People.ai and technical-interview startup Karat. The firm is also invested in anti-money laundering firm ComplyAdvantage, code-free programmer Bubble and customer-analytics software company Hook.
The partners aim to complete fund-raising by early 2023, Grimes said.
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