Neil Rimer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | October 7, 1963 |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Alma mater | Stanford University Harvard Business School |
| Occupation(s) | Venture capitalist and investor, founder and partner at Index Ventures |
Neil Rimer is a Swiss-Canadian venture capitalist who is the founding partner at Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in Europe, the United States, and Israel. [1] [2] [3] He is also the co-chair of the board of directors at Human Rights Watch. [4]
Rimer was born in Montreal, Quebec, and reared and educated (International School of Geneva) in Geneva, Switzerland. He received a bachelor's degree in History and Economics from Stanford University, and was a General Course student at the London School of Economics.
He then took his first job out of school with Montgomery Securities, an investment bank in San Francisco. He then completed a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, and upon graduating, chose to return to Europe. [5]
He was later quoted by Fortune as reflecting on this move, "I was excited about the idea of participating in the birth of the VC industry in Europe". [6]
Soon after his return to Geneva, in 1991, Rimer helped his father Gerald exit the bond trading business he had founded, and spent a few years connecting institutional investors with European technology startups, an effort that over time evolved into the official launch of Index Ventures. [6] In 1996 Rimer co-founded Index Ventures in Geneva with his brother, David, and Giuseppe Zocco, [7] helping raise Index' first pilot fund of $17 million, followed by a $180 million fund in 1998. [6] Companies funded during this time include SCM Microsystems (now Identiv) [6] and Virata, a chipmaker, which later entered into a $1.3 Billion merger with GlobeSpan. [8] Index started investing in Israeli companies in 2003. [9] As of 2007, Rimer claimed to The Wall Street Journal that "the bulk of our portfolio is in Europe and Israel." [10]
Notable investments by Rimer's company include Betfair (LSE : BET) and Skype (acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion, [11] [12] later acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion). [13] Index Ventures has invested in 21 Israeli companies, including MyHeritage, Outbrain, Lacoon, Adallom, Wiz, Capitolis, and Gong.io. [14]
Rimer has also invested in and served on the boards of directors of Last.fm (acquired by CBS for $280 million), [15] Ofoto (acquired by Kodak), [16] Trolltech (acquired by Nokia for $153 million), [17] Numerical Technologies (acquired by Synopsis for $250 million); [18] Genmab (Nasdaq Copenhagen : GEN); [7] and StepStone. [7] Rimer currently sits on the board of directors of a number of companies including Call9, Funding Circle, HouseTrip, MOO Print, PhotoBox, StackExchange, [7] Supercell, [19] Kaggle, [20] Metromile, [21] and The Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto for approximately $1.1 billion). [22]
Rimer headed the team at Index Ventures that led a $130 million funding round in Supercell, the subject of a May 6, 2013 Forbes article, "Is This the Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?" [19] In October 2013 Softbank and GungHo Online Entertainment acquired 51% of Supercell for $1.53 billion. [23]
In November 2017 Rimer was concerned that, although Europe was on a path to significance, it could miss the opportunities to build huge companies such as Amazon, Facebook or Google, if it could not attract the required talent. [24] In April 2020, Neil Rimer became a member of the Taxfix board. [25]
In 2017, Rimer was named the number one venture capitalist in Europe in Forbes' inaugural Midas List Europe. [26] He was also featured on the Forbes Global Midas list in 2018 [27] and the 2018 New York Times list of the top venture capitalists worldwide. [28]
Rimer is a member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch (HRW), [29] of which he became Co-Chair in 2019, [30] and is a founder of the Geneva Committee of HRW which named Israel an "Apartheid State". He has also served on the European Leadership Council of Harvard Business School and on the board of U.C. Sampdoria, a football club competing in the Italian Serie A professional football league competition. [3]
In January 2022, Neil Rimer, together with his father and brothers, donated $13 million to McGill University, for the modernization of the Leacock building and the setting up of the Institute for Indigenous Research and Knowledges. Rimer took the opportunity to highlight the lifelong impact the education at McGill had had on his parents. [31]
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites and an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net-worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.
Stephen T. Jurvetson is an American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in Hotmail, Memphis Meats, Mythic and Nervana Systems. He is currently a board member of SpaceX and served on Tesla's board from 2006–2020, among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ.
Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
John William Gurley is an American businessman. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in San Francisco, California. He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List and is considered one of the top dealmakers in the American technology industry.
Insight Partners is a global venture capital and private equity firm that invests in high-growth technology, software, and Internet businesses. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Palo Alto.
Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.
Klaus Hommels is a German venture capitalist. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in digital businesses. He has been invested in Facebook, Skype and Xing; other examples are Klarna and Revolut.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $35 billion as of March 2022.
Alfred Lin is an American venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. Lin was the COO, CFO, and Chairman of Zappos.com until 2010.
Danny Rimer OBE is a partner at Index Ventures, a global venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1992. Rimer opened the firm's London office in 2002 and its San Francisco office in 2012. He has become a leading voice on venture capital in Silicon Valley and Europe, and has been actively involved in various philanthropic and cultural activities.
Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist.
Peter Fenton is an American venture capitalist based in Silicon Valley. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a venture capital firm. Fenton has steadily worked his way up the Forbes Midas List of the 100 top technology investors, starting at no. 94 in 2007, then rising to no. 62 in 2008 and no. 50 in 2009. Fenton was ranked no. 4 when Forbes resumed publishing its Midas List in 2011 and was described as the "most productive venture capitalist on our list". In 2012, Fenton was ranked no. 5 on the Forbes Midas List and was no. 2 in 2015. He has been a perennial member on the Midas List since 2007.
Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Mark Tluszcz is an American businessman and venture capitalist who is co-founder and CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners, a venture capital firm he set up in 2000. He also serves as Chairman of Wix.com (NASDAQ:WIX), a popular website building platform. His achievements include turning a $2m investment in Skype into $200m and a $8m investment in Wix.com into $700m.
Josh Stein is an American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a managing partner at Threshold Ventures and was featured in the Forbes Midas List in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in recognition of his accomplishments as an investor. He was also the recipient of the 2015 Deloitte Fast 500 Venture Capitalist of the Year award. Stein holds board responsibilities at Box (company), Chartbeat, LaunchDarkley, LendKey, Lumity, and Talkdesk—and led Box’s first round of institutional investment. He is also an investor in AngelList, Doximity, Front, Loftium, Periscope Data acquired by Sisense, and Rippling.
Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. Gouw was named one of the 40 most influential minds in tech by Time Magazine. and has been recognized seven times on the Forbes Midas List as one of the "world's smartest tech investors". According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel (company)'s early investment in Facebook.
Gili Raanan is an Israeli venture capitalist and one of the inventors of CAPTCHA, the WAF and many other inventions in the fields of application security and discovery. Raanan started Sanctum in 1997, and invented the first Web application firewall AppShield and the first Web application penetration testing software AppScan. He later started NLayers which was acquired by EMC Corporation pioneering the science of Application discovery and understanding. He is an investor and a General Partner at Sequoia Capital, the Founder of Cyberstarts, and was a board member at Adallom, Armis Security, Onavo, Moovit, and Innovid (NYSE:CTV).
Freestyle Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. General Partners Dave Samuel and Jenny Lefcourt are both entrepreneurs who entered venture capital after founding multiple companies. The firm was founded in 2009 and typically invests in 10-12 companies per year with an average investment between $1.5 million to $3 million. Previous investments include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.
Michael Eisenberg is an American-born Israeli businessman, venture capitalist, and author.
In 2020, Neil Rimer, a Human Rights Watch board member since 2009, will join her as co-chair
