Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Yet Another New LA VC, NordicEye, Appears After Big Exit

Another, new venture capital firm, with an office in Los Angeles, NordicEye, has set up an office in Santa Monica, and has been targeting investments in the growing Silicon Beach region. NordicEye--which just saw a big exit after Los Angeles-based Weblife was acquired by Proofpoint today--says its investment efforts here are being led by Richard Sussman. The venture investor is split between Copenhagen and LA. NordicEye says it invests in European and US early-growth companies in technology and lifestyle business industries; Sussman says his expertise is in the Internet of Things (IoT), content, consumer electronics, software as a service, and data areas. NordicEye said it held a 30 percent stage in Weblife, which it acquired for $3.0M only 11 months ago, before Proofpoint's $66M acquisition of Weblife today. LA has had a surge in new investment funds appear over the last year or so, with the most recent additions being 3Rodeo (announced this week); Arrowroot Capital, with a $177M third fund; Ankona Capital, a new fund run by Jon Bauch and Brian Mesic; Pontifax AgTech, an agricultural investment fund with $105M in funding; just to name a few of the ones announced in the last month.