Just like last year, 2014 has been busy and eventful here at Version One.

We added 8 new companies to our portfolio:  Clio, a cloud-based practice management platform for the legal industry; Dwellable, a mobile-first vacation rentals marketplace; HandUp, a donation platform that lets you give directly to a person in-need; Mattermark, an analytics platform for investing, partnering, selling and marketing; Shippo, an e-commerce shipping solution; and 3 startups that have yet to announce their funding.  These new investments bring the total number of Version One companies to 22.  And similar to before, they join our portfolio that is dominated by SaaS (i.e. Front Desk, Top Hat), marketplaces (i.e. Kinnek, Tindie) and platforms (i.e. Figure 1).

Our other portfolio companies have also done well growing their businesses, enabling 11 of them to raise new rounds.  We participated in these follow-on deals to further support our founders.

Collectively, the amount raised by all our companies this year was $160M.

We remain geographically agnostic:  a 50-50 split between Canada and the US with the highest concentration in Toronto (6), SF/Bay Area (5) and Seattle (4).

In October, we announced our second fund of $35M.  With this new capital and looking ahead to the new year, we aim to sharpen our focus toward startups creating things that didn’t exist before.  Some of the themes that we are bullish about include mobile / full-stack marketplaces, mobile enterprise, healthcare, machine learning and artificial intelligence, Bitcoin and blockchain technology, and virtual reality.  And of course, we are excited about working with our founders and meeting new entrepreneurs as they strive to make a difference in our world.

Lastly, most of what we do is not possible without the support of our LPs, our colleagues, our partners, our portfolio companies, our family and friends, and our followers.  Thank you for an incredible year!

We wish everyone the happiest of holidays and all the best for 2015!

– Boris & Angela 🙂