Ariadne Capital is an Investment and Advisory Firm focused on Software and Services, New Media, Communications and Life Services. We are backed by 40 Entrepreneurs who founded the firm in 2000 in order to build the market leading companies of the new Millennium. Headquartered in London, our network of Executives, Investors and Partners extends from Asia to North America to Europe, giving us global reach.
Here’s more from the FAQ:
Ariadne has a hybrid business model of equity and fees which works because it aligns objectives between us and the entrepreneur we are backing.
When we engage with entrepreneurs, we take a small equity stake for the engagement which may vest over time for the overall “Ariadne bearhug” that we deliver in accelerating the momentum of our portfolio companies.
This is complemented with a success fee where there is a clear transaction: secure a partnership, raise capital, sell a business.
We always work on a retained basis, but these fees are never excessive as we think like entrepreneurs ourselves. We do however want to crystallize in the CEOs’ minds of our portfolio companies that there is an opportunity cost to whatever we do, and they are buying access to our network of relationships, our ideas, our time, our funding partners, and our portfolio.
We have great access to capital not only because we are part of the venture capital community in Europe and North America, but because family offices and the private investment vehicles of deep-pocked entrepreneurs select to work with us in both bringing us deals and backing our deals. In addition, we have 42 founding Investor Members who put capital into Ariadne Capital deals; we can syndicate an early stage deal up to £1 m.
They did help Skype and Zopa… and maybe have a kind of link with BetFair (or at least with his co-founder, Bert).
