Leaders Fund, a venture firm headquartered in Atlanta and Toronto, launched a $100 million fund yesterday for promising SaaS companies in North America. The fund will identify and invest in visionary entrepreneurs who are solving critical problems facing the enterprise. Its evergreen, flexible structure will enable the firm to partner creatively with other investors while producing an alignment with portfolio companies on deal structure, growth strategy and long-term goals.
“After years of successfully growing, operating and exiting enterprise SaaS companies, we decided to create a fund that enables us to sit, uniquely, on both sides of the entrepreneur and investor table,” said Atlanta’s Steve DeBacco, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Leaders Fund. “We are business leaders in our hearts and minds. By seeing the best and worst of venture capital partnerships with entrepreneurs, we’ve built Leaders Fund with a flexible structure that allows us to engage deeply where leaders need support while working in conjunction with other investment partners.”
The founding leadership team includes DeBacco, who recently served as CRO of Applied Predictive Technologies (acquired by Mastercard), David Stein, founder and co-CEO of Rypple (acquired by salesforce.com) and co-founder of Workbrain (acquired by Infor); and Gideon Hayden, a rising star at OMERS Ventures with experience with SaaS portfolio companies, including Hootsuite, 360 Incentives and Klipfolio. Howard Gwin, a renowned enterprise software operator and venture investor, will serve as a venture partner.
By combining the team’s operational experience with a partner-friendly investment approach, Leaders Fund is positioned to offer companies capital, expertise and connections to build storied SaaS enterprises. The fund is also looking to partner with early and late stage venture capital firms on similar investments. Uniquely, the Leaders Fund is not limited to the typical markets of Silicon Valley and New York, offering opportunities and investment to underserved technology communities.
Learn more about the Leaders Fund by following them on LinkedIn or Twitter.
