BGV Marks 18th Exit and First Close of Its Fourth Fund

Successful Exits and New Investments Underscore Firm's Commitment to Fourth Era of Enterprise Startups

BGV, an early-stage venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots and an exclusive focus on global enterprise 4.0 startups, today announced the first close of its fourth fund and the definitive agreement of BGV Fund II portfolio company Grid Dynamics to merge with Chaserg CTAC. With a complete continuity of team, strategy and approach, BGV has announced a first close of BGV IV, LP, its fourth flagship fund with a planned target of $150M.

The BGV team continues to make investments that reinforce the firm's leadership with Enterprise 4.0 technology startups. Late 2019, BGV made two investments in the Enterprise 4.0 category. The first, Folloze, is a Marketing hyper-personalization platform enabling B2B sales teams. The company's Marketing solution dynamically combines visitor data, intent data and account data yielding a depth of personalization thereby providing a one-to-one engagement with B2B customers improving conversions across their entire buying journey. And the second, Madkudu, an AI/Machine learning solution for the marketing operations of B2B SaaS companies to help them accelerate growth by enabling chief marketing officers (CMO) to put marketing operations on autopilot and focus on building great brands.

These two companies share many of the attributes BGV recognizes in truly innovative Enterprise 4.0 startups, which include:

• Cross-border companies founded outside the U.S. that have global ambition, and strong alignment with BGV investment thesis
• Unique opportunity for BGV to add value through founder mentoring, improved board governance, early strategic partnerships and assistance with raising capital
• AI-powered solutions applied to novel data sets coupled with intelligent automation
• Management teams with substantial expertise in a specific industry or functional area
• A strong use case with beachhead customers and value proposition that had been referenced extensively

"We're excited to announce a first close of our fourth fund, which remains right-sized to invest in startups that advance the enterprise into the next phase of innovation -- Enterprise 4.0," said Eric Benhamou, founder and general partner at BGV. "Our cross-border investment strategy allows BGV to actively work with CEOs to build value in the companies they create and provide the necessary capital to scale globally. BGV's immigrant origins have enabled us to relate to and connect with the challenges of being an immigrant founder. This cross-border approach allows BGV to source the most promising capital efficient startups originating in innovation hubs outside the Valley and help them scale here."

BGV has built a geographically broad team with deep enterprise company building experience who take an active and unique approach to growth -- assisting portfolio companies to validate their technologies and scale their businesses globally. BGV's team has over 300 years of combined business building experience, investing in global enterprise-focused businesses anchored in Silicon Valley and source from their global networks in the U.S., Israel, India and Western Europe.

Bringing Grid Dynamics to NASDAQ

Grid Dynamics grew from an early BGV II fund investment to become a leader in driving enterprise-level digital transformation for Fortune 1000 companies. The company has a highly experienced and cohesive management team led by Leonard Livschitz (CEO) coupled with strong technical expertise in the rapidly growing fields of artificial intelligence (AI), data science and cloud computing.

On November 15, 2019, Grid Dynamics announced its definitive merger agreement with Chaserg, a special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC), to become a publicly listed company on NASDAQ. The company's equity market capitalization was approximately $515 million based on a stock price of $10.00 per share. The merger is expected to close in Q1 2020.

"By taking an approach to investing in and building enterprise value from the earliest stages of a startup, BGV is able to help companies like Grid Dynamics grow in scale and maturity to the point of becoming publicly listed on a major exchange. Over the past five years, the BGV team and I have worked closely with Grid Dynamics to organically scale the company and guide its acquisition by ASL in 2016. We stayed closely involved with the management team as they joined their parent company, ASL, and made an additional investment to fund continued organic and inorganic growth to bolster Grid Dynamics and help the company to scale its business. With an IPO scale business, we then worked with management to prepare the company for its IPO through a SPAC process in 2020," said Eric Benhamou, founding general partner at BGV.

ABOUT BGV

BGV is an early-stage venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots and an exclusive focus on global enterprise 4.0 startups. BGV currently has 30+ active companies in its portfolio. The BGV team has successfully built and implemented a cross-border venture investing model with companies from Israel, Europe and India. The firm was founded by Eric Benhamou, former chairman and CEO of 3Com, Palm and co-founder of Bridge Communications. Comprised of an experienced partnership team of global operating executives and investors, BGV is often the first and most active institutional investor in the start-ups they invest in and use their operational experience and their extensive network of technical advisors, executives and functional experts to actively engage with its portfolio companies. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Website: www.benhamouglobalventures.com

Twitter: @BenhamouGlobalV

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benhamou-global-ventures

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