Origin Ventures Closes $80M Fourth Fund

Early-stage VC fund announces five investments; opens Salt Lake City office

Chicago, IL (April 27, 2017) — Origin Ventures is pleased to announce the final close of its fourth venture capital fund at $80M, bringing its total assets under management to more than $135M.

Founded in 1999 by Steve Miller and Bruce Barron, Origin Ventures is an early-stage technology investor focused on high-growth software, marketplace, and content businesses.

“By more than doubling the size of our previous fund, we are well-positioned to provide capital and resources to our portfolio companies,” said co-founder Steve Miller. “We will continue to do what has made us successful — partnering with ambitious founders who have demonstrated initial product/market fit in large and growing markets.”

The firm expects to continue to invest and support entrepreneurship throughout the United States and Canada. Brent Hill, a partner who joined Origin Ventures in 2013 after stints at Twitter and Google, will be based in Salt Lake City to better support the firm’s portfolio companies and investment activity in the Rocky Mountain and west coast regions.

Origin Ventures expects to expand the Origin Ventures Network (OVeN), a collaboration platform launched in 2015 and offered to all portfolio companies. Resources include a portfolio-wide chat platform, function-specific online roundtables, benchmarking data, and in-person summits.

“We launched OVeN two years ago to provide resources, both online and in person, to the hundreds of employees within Origin portfolio companies. It has had a great, positive impact on the portfolio companies. Our summit events for functional leaders — CEOs, VPs of Sales, VPs of Marketing — have also proved to be incredibly valuable,” commented partner Jason Heltzer. “Inspired by the results to-date, we have ambitious plans for OVeN as we add more portfolio companies.”

Since the fund’s initial closing in 2016, the firm has invested in five companies:

• Tock is a reservations and operations software platform used by some of the most successful restaurants in the world, including Alinea, French Laundry, and Eleven Madison Park.
• Tovala has developed a smart table-top convection oven that is paired with a food service. This “Keurig for fresh food” is a W16 Y-Combinator graduate and sold 1,000 ovens on Kickstarter, 2.5x its goal.
• AppDetex helps companies manage their portfolio of web domains and mobile applications to identify and eliminate fraudulent use.
• Kidizen is a leading online marketplace that allows parents to buy and sell used children’s apparel.
• Avant is an online consumer lender, using data and machine learning algorithms to improve underwriting decisions.

About Origin Ventures

Origin Ventures is a leading venture capital firm that collaborates with ambitious founders to build high-growth, innovative, category-defining technology companies. Founded in 1999, Origin is composed entirely of former operators and engineers with extensive venture investing experience. The firm’s realized performance places it in the top 5% of VC firms nationally. Previous investments include Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB), iNest, DialogTech, Apptentive, and Teem. For more information, visit www.originventures.com.

This announcement was covered in TechCrunch, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, Chicago Inno and Built in Chicago.