Archives: Portfolio

What they do
We love smart Hardware at C4 Ventures. Sometimes this means disrupting existing hardware manufacturers by building smart software running on commoditized hardware. This is what DriveNets has done!

At the time of the greatest demand surge in telco history, DriveNets disrupts the way networks are built, scaled, operated and paid for.

The company has developed a software-only solution that allows Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to switch from expensive monolithic routers to commodity hardware with a fixed all-you-can-eat software licensing model. CSPs will be able to scale up at less cost without compromising security or performance, which will rather increase thanks to network unification and automation. The technology was already adopted by major tier-1 network operators.

We are very excited to be part of DriveNets’ mission to create the best performing CSP networks with disruptive economics.

How we met
Olivier spent a few years at Orange building telecom Cost models for M&A activities. He was always shocked by the amount of money Telecom operators had to spend on routers and switches to be able to keep up with the consumers voracious appetite for Data.

On his side, thanks to his role at Apple, Pascal has become very familiar with the challenges of Telecom Operators. When they heard of the software Ido and Hillel, both serial telco entrepreneurs were building, they knew they had found the perfect solution for their old friends running telecom operators. They were flattered that DriveNets chose C4 Ventures for their Series A.

What they do
Duda is the leading professional web design platform for companies that offer web design services to small businesses. Duda serves all types of Web Pros, from freelancers and digital agencies all the way up to the largest hosting companies, SaaS platforms and online publishers in the world.

With powerful white label, team collaboration and client management tools, the Duda platform enables the creation of feature-rich, responsive websites at scale. Every Duda website is automatically optimized for fast load times and great out-of-the-box SEO.

Duda has partnered with some of the biggest players in the industry, including Thryv, GoDaddy, Hibu, ServiceTitan, Italiaonline, 1&1 Ionos, UOL, Sensis, and Publicar, is a G2 Leader in the 2020 and 2021 Website Builder and Web Content Management rankings, and is the 2021 Gold Stevie Award winner for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year.

Duda was founded in 2009, serves over 17,000 global customers. Without knowing, you probably have already visited several websites powered by Duda!

How we met
Pascal met Itai and Amir several years ago and has been following them ever since. With their Series C on the way, it was time we worked together to help them expand to Europe, a market we know very well.

What they do
Everli is a leading European marketplace for grocery shopping. Started in 2014 in Italy, it matches customers with the retailer of their choice and a dedicated shopper who will pick the order in-store and deliver it to them on the same day or, for an added cost, within an hour.

Unlike dark stores, this asset-light model allows Everli not to own inventory of perishable goods and to scale much more rapidly than other companies opting for a dark store model. Through its tech and data excellence, it has also proven invaluable to partnering supermarkets and retailers looking to adapt to consumers’ new shopping behavior and complement their offering with an online solution without the struggles that come with it.

Today, Everli has become the delivery partner of some of Europe’s largest grocery brands, such as Lidl, Kaufland and Carrefour. It offers access to over 300,000 products across the 70 cities in Italy, Poland, and, more recently, Czech Republic and France. 20% of orders are already international.

How we met
Our Operating Partner Yassir Khalid introduced us to Federico and we quickly decided to visit the headquarters in Milan, a city that is close to our hearts not just because of Pascal’s Italian roots but because it is the booming heart of Italian entrepreneurship. We are convinced that the maturity of its tech ecosystem will drive many more successful companies out of the country and hope that this will be only the first of many more investments in Italian scale ups for C4 Ventures!

What they do
Fifteen offers an all-in-one Augmented Bike Network solution that enables cities and mobility operators of all sizes to provide high-performance bike services in short and long-term rental models.

Their end-to-end technology expertise and experience in deploying the world’s largest services ensures a flowless service and an unparalleled green mobility experience – thus helping accelerate the modal shift from cars, which comes with invaluable benefits for the environment, public health and inclusivity.

Fifteen’s growth and experience has led to the development of the ultimate shared e-bike, Fusion. This ultra-robust, easy-to-handle and lightweight bike incorporates cutting-edge technologies such as automatic power management for an easy ride without the need for gears, bike geolocation, self-diagnosis in the event of a fault, as well as an alarm and electronic anti-theft system.

The Fusion e-bikes can be recharged through the world’s most compact dock which accommodates up to 10 bikes in the space of a car parking space. Neatly tessellated and locked together with electromagnets – the dock also allows for the transfer of energy from one bike to the next.

The name, Fifteen, reflects their ambition to make the fifteen-minutes city a reality. Fifteen minutes to go to work, to school, to shop… Fifteen minutes to get around town by foot or by bike . It should be possible and accessible to all, whether you’re living in the city, in the suburbs or in a rural town… No boundaries, more flexibility!

How we met
Michel Sassano first met Arnaud le Rodallec at France Digitale Day in September 2018. Due to the speed-dating format of such event, he had only 10 minutes to discuss with Arnaud but it was just enough to spark his curiosity and interest. A few weeks later, Eric, Arnaud and Amira came to our office by bike and all of the C4 Ventures team in Paris took a ride around the block.

What they do
Fisker Inc. is a pioneering mobility technology company researching, developing and producing the next generation of electric vehicles. As the electrification revolution begins to infiltrate the automotive industry, Fisker is focused on delivering advanced smart solutions across the electrification ecosystem from charging, to battery technology, powertrain and connected vehicle functionality.
Their first SUV, Fisker Ocean, redefines the electric experience with unprecedented miles range, uncompromising performances, strong product design and sustainability. Its luxury interior is entirely made from recycled, abandoned fishing nets & plastics from the ocean.
Aside from the Ocean SUV, Fisker is planning a portfolio expansion through a range of highly emotional and differentiated vehicles, including a segment busting super-sports sedan based on the EMotion concept, a sports crossover, and a pickup truck. Each vehicle will be delivered utilizing platforms, battery packs and component systems from the world’s leading car manufacturers and technology suppliers. Together with an innovative lease program, they will be able to bring a diverse choice of products to suit a wide variety of customers across many different budgets points.
Since 30th October 2020, Fisker is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: FSR).

How we met
An automotive icon and tech visionary, Henrik Fisker has created some of the most iconic vehicles ever on four wheels, including the James Bond’s famed BMW Z8. Being product lovers at C4, we were thrilled to back him on his journey to produce the next generation of electric vehicles.

What they do
Since 2012, Formlabs has been disrupting 3D Printing industry: they develop an affordable high-resolution printer to enable designers, engineers, and creators to easily realize their dream product in beautiful physical form at a fraction of the cost of industrial 3D printers.

Formlabs took an existing technology called stereolithography (SLA) and made it accessible and user-friendly. The launch of Form2 in September 2015 marked a significant advance on Form1+, one of the most well-reviewed and highly recommended 3D printers on the market for a wide variety of users, ranging from hobbyists to professionals.

How we met
The whole team has always been passionate by 3D Printing: one of us even got a 3D scan and print of himself (only for testing purposes of course).

Pascal, Max and Natan have known each other for a few years and Pascal never misses an occasion to swing by Boston and talk about Formlabs marketing strategy and Max and Natan share their passion for technology coming out of the MIT

It was only a question of time before C4 Ventures invested.

What they do
When the company first launched in 2009, it was a social network for “checking in” to locations and earning digital badges for achievements. (Remember becoming “The Mayor” of your local bar?). Far beyond a ‘simple’ local search-and-discovery service mobile app, Foursquare technology ushered in the era of real-world cookies. With billions of check-ins, millions of identified places (and the photos associated to those places) and other customer data, they have developed a powerful location & recommendation platform. By 2014, Foursquare rebranded its check-in app as Swarm and its Yelp-style recommendation service as Foursquare City Guide.

In 2016, Foursquare raised a new $45 million Series D round from investors including Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Foursquare also made its COO Jeff Glueck, the former CMO of Travelocity, its new CEO, and moved Dennis Crowley, the cofounder and face of the company, to Executive Chairman. Since that time, Glueck has quietly led a very successful pivot. Foursquare has transformed itself into a business-to-business partner that sells location-tracking data to other tech companies and retail brands.

The company reached another milestone when it raised a massive $150m round led by The Raine Group to acquire other Placed in May 2019 and then Factual in April 2020, propelling them forward as the #1 independent leader in location. David Shim, CEO of Placed, joined as President and was later elevated to the chief exec role after former Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck left in December 2019.

How we met
Here at C4 Ventures, we have been convinced about Foursquare for a while now. Olivier can be counted as one of its very first users.

However, our first encounter with Foursquare leadership dates back to Pascal’s time at Apple when Steven still worked at Quattro Wireless, which was acquired by Apple later on. Steven and Pascal got along so well, it is no surprise they reconnected and decided to share another piece of adventure together.

Today, we’re thrilled to keep supporting David Shim, Gil Elbaz and Dennis Crowley on their journey to create a world-class location platform.

What they were doing
Our world is not flat and framed but traditional cameras only capture a small portion of the action, limited by the field of view of the device.

Giroptic went beyond that and its high definition 360º camera broke through this limitation to make it amazingly simple to record and share live the entire experience in 360. Using a patented technology, the Giroptic iO forever changed the way we capture and experience life around us.

But unfortunately, after a 10-year journey led by an amazing entrepreneur, Giroptic ceased its activities in March 2018. Even though they built exciting and innovative products thanks to a disruptive technology, they suffered from a newly born market struggling to take off. We will undoubtedly remember Facebook’s love for Giroptic as well as French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who filmed the ISS with a Giroptic camera.

 

The Founder
We engaged with Giroptic thanks to our friends at Partech Ventures who argued we would bring a lot for the company’s development. In a matter of two days, Giroptic’s founder Richard Ollier came to London to meet us, Olivier went to Lille to meet the rest of team. Richard impressed us by his talent as an engineer but also and more importantly as a visionary and resilient entrepreneur. Richard definitively shares our passion for amazing products with beautiful design and we can’t wait to see what his next ventures will be!

What they do
Graphcore has developed a chipset designed from the ground up to accelerate both current and next generation machine intelligence applications such as natural language dialogue, autonomous vehicles and personalized medicines.
The company’s IPU technology (Intelligent Processing Unit) is 10x to 100x faster than alternative solutions.

Graphcore also plans to make its technology available for embedded consumer applications including collaborative robots and intelligent mobile devices.

The image on the left was generated by Graphcore’s software whilst it was processing a machine learning model : Artificial Intelligence is sometimes very close to modern art!

How we met
Artificial Intelligence is at the core of C4 Ventures’ smart hardware specialisation. Other C4 Ventures portfolio companies rely on AI and we realised early on the need for a dedicated high performance chipset.

When Olivier first visited Nigel and Simon in Bristol, he was thrilled with their vision and ambition. They had past experience with semi-conductor industry veterans and were excited to address the machine learning market – a market which will have a larger impact on businesses and consumers than the mobile phone had.

A few days later, Pascal and Nigel deep dived into the business and discussed the support C4 Ventures could bring to Graphcore’s global development. After several hours of discussion, one of the conclusions was that a great bottle of wine and AI also go well together!

What they do
Today, space is becoming strategic for many companies. It is forecasted that no less than 27,000 satellites will be in-orbit in 2030 (McKinsey & Company). The problem is that low-altitude orbits (Low Earth Orbits- LEO) are becoming saturated and limited in terms of area coverage. One clear solution is to launch satellites to more distant orbits named Geostationary Equatorial Orbits (GEO) to have more space and a greater Earth surface coverage.

For now, satellites must transit via Geostationary Transfer Orbits (GTO) for months before reaching GEO or pay a high price to embark on a heavy vehicle. Impulse’s space vehicle “Helios » will cut the cost to go from LEO to GEO and shorten transfer time from several weeks to a few hours. Just like a van, “Helios” will provide in-space transportation to customised orbits, facilitating journeys to GEOs, the Moon, and Mars.

Impulse Space’s founder and CEO Tom Mueller is one of the most renowned space engineers globally. Tom Mueller is notably famous for co-founding SpaceX with Elon Musk and designing SpaceX’s groundbreaking propulsion engines Merlin (powering Falcon9) and Draco (powering the Dragon spacecraft). Tom Mueller went through the whole SpaceX journey and brought along dozens of SpaceX engineers and executives with him to Impulse.

Impulse’s initial and immediate focus lies in another space vehicle « Mira » that is capable of delivering multiple payloads to unique orbits from a single launch. Using chemical propulsion, Mira will be able to perform a series of on-orbit tasks like last-mile payload delivery, payload hosting, low-altitude maneuvers, and atmospheric re-entry. Mira’s first mission will launch on a Falcon9 and is planned for November 2023, less than 2 years after the company’s foundation !

How we met
C4 Ventures had been looking into SpaceTech for a couple of years, gathering knowledge and building relationships with the ecosystem, although all this hard work did not materialize into an actual investment… until we met Tom and the Impulse team. Boris eventually heard about them from a close friend and Business Angel. As soon as we met, it became crystal clear on both sides that we would create value together, starting with the company’s expansion to the European market.