“Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am excited to announce today the first close of >$120mm for Group 11’s fifth FinTech fund.
Today’s announcement marks the culmination of the good faith and efforts put together by dozens of people that partnered with Group 11 since its inception to achieve this impressive (and initial) outcome.
When the team and I set to raise Fund V less than 90 days ago, we made the strategic decision to…
By Devon Morris, Partner, Group 11 and the Group 11 Team
Less than a year after Group 11’s initial investment, and only five months since the company’s Series B led by Scale Venture Partners, we are pleased to announce that Papaya Global has completed a $100MM Series C round led by Greenoaks Capital, with participation with Group 11 and existing investors. This raise values the company at $1.1BN and adds Papaya to the Global List of Tech Unicorns, making it the fourth in Group 11’s continuously-growing stable of unicorns.
Greenoaks Capital will join existing Papaya investors: Scale Venture Partners, Insight…
A Whole New World: How EquityBee is Creating The Private Stock Market of the Future
By Michelle Chang, Senior Associate, Group 11
EquityBee announced today a $20MM Series A financing round led by Group 11 with participation from new investor Zeev Ventures as well as existing investors Altair Capital, Battery Ventures, and LocalGlobe. This is the second time over the past two years that Group 11’s has led a financing round in EquityBee, having also led their most recent financing round back in February 2020.
We believe EquityBee is completely reimagining the private liquidity market of the future by helping…
By Devon Morris, Partner, Group 11
Today, TripActions announced closing a $155MM Series E round at a $5BN post-money valuation. The round was co-led by Addition, Cosmic Capital, and existing investor A16Z who joined other existing investors Greenoaks Capital, Vista Equity Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, and Group 11.
Despite an incredibly turbulent year amidst COVID, TripActions continued to build out its platform, and launched and expanded TripActions Liquid. It now has over 4,000+ global customers like Glassdoor, GameStop, and Mozilla, and added new 2020 customers such as: Heidrick & Struggles, Mastec, SVB, ISG, American Tower, and many others…
By Dovi Frances, Founding Partner, Group 11
“Out of the hottest fire comes the strongest steel”
Chinese Proverb.
One day, in the not-so-distant future, probably around 2026, a Harvard business case study, maybe even a book, will be written about TripActions’ story from its inception in 2016 to obtaining global market dominance circa 2025.
Surely one special chapter will be dedicated to carefully describe how the leadership team at TripActions (with the support of their remarkable investors Oren Zeev, Ben Horowitz, Arif Janmohamed, and others who joined us recently, have navigated the COVID-19 crisis which has severely impacted global travel.
…
By Roxane Googin, Chief Futurist, Group 11 and Dovi Frances, Founding Partner, Group 11
“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished…
He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better.
His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. …
By Dovi Frances, Founding Partner, Group 11 and Devon Morris, Partner Group 11
There are times when a successful investor knows they have a great company, when others are busy looking at their hands (or get distracted with community events, yoga retreats, etc.) A great company that has all the merits and trajectory of being category-defining. A company that is building a really needed product and has the potential to change the landscape of an emerging industry into its own image.
We believe Group 11 has found another such company: Lili, Mobile Banking for Freelancers.
The Second Coming of Real Unicorns
By Roxane Googin, Chief Futurist, Group 11 and Dovi Frances, Founding Partner, Group 11.
“Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I…
By Dovi Frances, Founding Partner, Group 11 and Devon Morris, Partner, Group 11
Tipalti, the early years
In January 2014, Group 11 released a short article in the C-Suite Quarterly Magazine looking at Israeli Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups. Titled Software Companies as an Investment Asset Class, we discussed the winding down of real innovation in the realm of consumer-facing internet products, and a significant move towards investments and true innovation in B2B and B2B2C software. Citing some relevant data from PwC, Crunchbase, and the NVCA, we emphasized how important it was to “Get in Early and at an Attractive Valuation” in…
Less than four months after our initial strategic secondary investment, Group 11 is pleased to announce that Papaya Global has completed a $40MM Series B Round led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Workday Ventures, Access Industries (via its Israeli investment vehicle Claltech), and existing investors Insight Venture Partners, New Era Capital Partners, Dynamic Loop Ventures, Bessemer Ventures and Group 11.
On a rocketship’s trajectory, Papaya Global’s digital HR platform has more than tripled its business since its September 2019 Series A and has added new name brand clients like DataDog, nCino, Hopin to name a few. …
Dovi Frances is a financial services entrepreneur and founding partner of Group 11, a venture capital firm based in Los Angeles, California.