Resilience

Commitment

Perseverance

Focus

ABOUT US

First Ascent Ventures was founded in 2015 and invests in emerging technology companies that are building the next generation of disruptive, enterprise B2B software that leverages the cloud, big data, analytics, mobility, AI and machine learning. The founding partners of the Fund Richard Black and Tony van Marken have been involved with over 35 technology companies as founders, operating executives, advisors and investors with a track record of successful growth and premium returns.

First Ascent Ventures is looking for outstanding, committed entrepreneurs and management teams who seek not just financial backing, but the experience and expertise of successful financial and operating executives who can create a catalyst for growth and ultimately a successful exit for all stake holders.

The story behind the name

In mountaineering a first ascent is the first successful, documented summit of a mountain by an unclimbed route. First ascents are notable because they entail genuine exploration, with greater risks, challenges and recognition than climbing a route pioneered by others. This is not dissimilar to the challenges and risks involved in building a start-up technology company.

INVESTMENT CRITERIA

Our target companies have growing monthly recurring revenues with a strong product offering and top tier customer references. We typically invest from the Series A round onwards with around $5 to $10 million per investment. In order to add value we require a board seat and actively assist management teams to grow their business.

 

  • “In early stage companies, the investors you bring on the journey can be as crucial to your success as your first executive team hires.  Selected well, they will contribute at crucial times and on critical topics in a helpful and valuable manner.  In a Canadian context, First Ascent Ventures, is one of the most thoughtful, pragmatic and experienced names in venture capital.  Any early stage company Founder/Leadership team would do well to have them in the tent and on the journey.”

    Andrew Waitman - CEO, Assent Compliance

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The Team

  • “I’ve had the opportunity to work with Tony and the team at First Ascent Ventures, since 2016. They have been instrumental in helping grow Q4 from an early stage company to the scaled business it is today. It’s never easy to build a company and there are always ups and downs. Having the right partner, like First Ascent Ventures, makes all the difference in achieving success and getting to the next level.”

    Darrell Heaps - CEO, Q4 Inc.

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ScribbleLive is an award-winning content performance company that provides global brands with the insights and solutions they need to better attract, convert, and retain their audiences.

Companies such as Red Bull, FedEx, Dell, Reuters, Yahoo, American Express, and the Boston Globe leverage the ScribbleLive Content Cloud to create scalable, premium content, interactive experiences and real-time audience engagement.

Our goal is to help you optimize your content performance and drive better business results.

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Q4 is a leading global provider of cloud-based investor relations and capital market solutions with has offices in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Copenhagen, and London.

Their comprehensive portfolio of IR solutions, including quantitative and real-time shareholder analytics, IR desktop, websites, and webcasting arm industry professionals with the tools and insights required to run award-winning IR programs, make effective business decisions, and better engage with the street.

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The Assent Compliance Platform is a centralized supply chain data management platform that leverages automated supplier engagement and logic-driven data validation to provide actionable analytics on information.

The solution combines leading-edge technologies with extensive supply chain expertise to enhance data management for product compliance, corporate social responsibility and vendor risk.

 

Sensibill works with the most innovative global financial institutions to solve their customers’ pain point of managing receipts.

Sensibill’s solution drives net new engagements across online and mobile banking channels, while unlocking deep purchase insights across all payment methods. The service is fully white-labeled, designed specifically to meet bank requirements and is live with Tier 1 financial institutions today.

The company operates in the United States, Europe and Canada.

 

AI STARTUP RUBIKLOUD TO BE ACQUIRED BY OTTAWA-BASED KINAXIS FOR $81.4 MILLION CAD

OTTAWA, ON, June 15, 2020 – Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX: KXS), the authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Toronto-based Rubikloud, a disruptive, emerging provider of AI solutions that automate supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.

Globally-recognized retailers and CPG manufacturers in the health and beauty, household and grocery segments use Rubikloud’s AI-based products today. Their offerings include demand forecasting and automation to manage and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment to drive product demand and dramatically improve financial results. Kinaxis will enhance RapidResponse’s demand planning capabilities with the Rubikloud offerings, anticipating initial opportunities in the company’s rapidly-growing CPG customer base and over time for other industries such as life sciences. The acquisition also offers Kinaxis a springboard into the enterprise retail industry.

“Rubikloud has capabilities and value that we can offer our CPG customers today, leads us into the retail industry with some bellwether accounts, and adds a group of approximately 80 people to an already-impressive AI and machine learning (ML) team here at Kinaxis. Over time, this enhanced group will contribute to new and existing AI-powered capabilities across the full Kinaxis RapidResponse® platform and applications,” said John Sicard, President and CEO of Kinaxis. “This acquisition reflects the growing importance of AI and ML to power intelligent automation and augment human decision-making to better deliver on customer promises, remove waste and increase resiliency for effective risk management.”

Rubikloud’s SaaS-based ML offerings empower retail and CPG manufacturers to transform their core operations by improving and automating complex, profit-generating decisions. Rubikloud’s proven AI capabilities and intuitive tools enable users to leverage disparate data sources to improve forecast accuracy, site-level allocations, inventory availability and promotion plans by allowing users to run boundless simulations in real time.

“We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems and we have spent the last seven years building a fantastic product that receives validation from global customers every day,” said Kerry Liu, CEO, Rubikloud. “We’re excited at the prospect of joining Kinaxis, which helps us bring our innovations to a much broader customer base at a faster pace than on our own. Not only that, being two strong Canadian companies we see great cultural synergy and look forward to working on the complex problems we know RapidResponse and concurrent planning can solve for customers.”

Terms of Agreement
Kinaxis will acquire Rubikloud for US$60 million in an all-cash transaction that is expected to close within 60 days. Based on Rubikloud’s current revenue and expense profile, the company’s fiscal 2020 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, as reiterated in its May 6, 2020 news release, remains unchanged. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

About Kinaxis Inc. 
Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis® delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste. For more Kinaxis news, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Upchain-new-2

Upchain is a cloud PLM solution that integrates engineering data up and down the value chain to drive collaboration, innovation, and growth.

Started in 2015 with the goal of changing what PLM means for users across the supply chain, Upchain's vision is a completely interconnected supply chain from the first nut to the final bolt, where collaboration is the default setting, and where mission-critical data is simultaneously accessible and secure. We think process doesn’t have to be as hard as it is, and we intend to make it a whole lot easier for everyone.

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ThinkData Works Inc. is a Toronto-based technology company whose platform, Namara.io, is used by some of the worlds’ largest organizations to process and refine data into usable products. We host one of the worlds’ largest repositories of publicly available data and enable our clients to significantly increase the amount of information they use to run their business.

At ThinkData, our mission is to build the easiest and most secure solution that enables our users to access, collaborate, and integrate with the data that powers their business. Some of the largest companies in the world use our platform to build machine intelligent solutions that are redefining their industries - all built on the back of our platform Namara.

Sportlogic

Sportlogiq is an AI powered sports analytics company. We help teams win more games and broadcasters engage more viewers.

Our advanced analytics software tracks the location and actions of every player on the ice, field, or court using standard game footage. Machine intelligence techniques are then used to extract meaningful insights from the data collected, allowing teams and fans to understand and experience the game in ways previously unimaginable.

Dialogue offers a range of healthcare services to employees and their families. We work hard to keep individuals healthy, present at work, productive and happy.

Through Dialogue, employees can chat with a nurse for any health or well-being related questions, consult a psychologist when they are stressed, chat with a nutritionist to lose weight, or consult with a doctor for conditions that can be managed virtually. We are a new part of your employees'​ benefits program. No more time wasted in waiting rooms, or conditions that go untreated because they simply don't have time.

DailyPay

DailyPay partners with companies to offer employees the ability to control when they get paid. Not only does this solution empower financial wellness, but for the company it acts as a tool to recruit, retain, and engage their workforce. At DailyPay, our mission is to offer people their first steps toward financial security.

The senior management team at DailyPay spent years at AOL, Goldman Sachs, and LendingHome. DailyPay is backed by leading venture capital firms and world class strategic investors. The Company is headquartered in New York.

At LinkSquares, we think your internal legal and finance teams have better things to do than spending thousands of hours a year reviewing contracts one by one. So we built software that automatically reads and retrieves key data from your entire library of agreements, making review and diligence projects lightning fast and super simple. You'll be up and running on our AI-powered Contract Analytics cloud in a snap too - our white-glove onboarding will have you launched, trained, and fully integrated into your workflows in 30 days.

So go focus on raising money, getting acquired, or just plain growing as fast as you can. With LinkSquares, your contracts will become a source of knowledge the entire company can depend on.