London, United Kingdom - July 2024
Kennet has raised €266 million for its largest fund to date, Kennet VI. Kennet has already begun to deploy this capital into capital efficient B2B SaaS companies across Europe, including Screendragon in Ireland and the UK and Fluid Topics in France.
Kennet VI builds on the success of the previous five funds and proven investment thesis. Kennet has over 25 years of experience and a proven track record across multiple market cycles. Not only has the firm raised its largest ever fund in a challenging macro environment, it has also continued to deliver exits, such as Eloomi in January 2024 generating a 3.1x cash multiple. This follows numerous successful exits in recent years including Nuxeo (5x), Dext (3.8x), CrossBorder Solutions (6.4x), Rimilia (2.5x), and Impartner (2.6x).
Kennet focuses exclusively on investing in established, high growth B2B SaaS technology companies which are founder-owned and either highly capital efficient or fully ‘bootstrapped’ – built without external capital. The investment from Kennet is typically the first external funding that companies receive and is used to scale and expand internationally, build world class management teams and build strategic value.
Michael Elias, Managing Director, said: “This fundraise marks another important milestone for Kennet as we close our largest fund to date, with a significant number of previous investors participating in this fund. At a time when the market has recognised that ‘growth at any cost’ is no longer rational, our long-standing conservative strategy has appealed to investors. Kennet’s risk-balanced strategy provides investors with the growth associated with innovative technology, while maintaining a low failure rate. We have proven over numerous fund cycles that capital efficient B2B SaaS businesses offer attractive investment opportunities and that helping entrepreneurs build outstanding management teams and enter global markets remains a winning formula.”
Hillel Zidel, Managing Director, said: “Our proven approach is based on the relationships we establish with bootstrapped founders, understanding that this will be a long-term trusted partnership. Unlike venture-backed businesses, our founders have typically not taken external investment before – they need to know they are working with the right team to realise their global ambitions. We are very proud that founders choose to work with Kennet because of our deep market knowledge, and reputation for fairness and integrity. This has enabled us to invest in great companies at sensible valuations regardless of the hype cycle. B2B software has become the engine room of many sectors, and Kennet VI will be at the forefront of the next generation of mission critical, scaling businesses.”
Kennet VI was raised as part of a successful partnership with Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity (EdRPE) which began in 2017. Edmond de Rothschild is a cornerstone investor in the Kennet VI fund and the bank’s global client base has had priority access to the fund. British Patient Capital, Federated Hermes Private Equity and Bpifrance also committed to the fund.
Francois-Xavier Vucekovic, CIO at Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity, adds: “We firmly believe that technology plays a critical role in the transformation of our economies and societies. Our commitment is to support and nurture companies that are at the forefront of innovation and value creation. The success of this fundraising effort, particularly in the current challenging environment, is a testament to the strength and relevance of Kennet's strategic approach. By leveraging cutting-edge tech solutions, Kennet ensures the sustainability and growth of their clients' business models, enabling them to thrive in a rapidly evolving market."
ABOUT EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD
As a conviction-driven investment house founded upon the belief that wealth should be used to build the world of tomorrow, Edmond de Rothschild specialises in Private Banking and Asset Management and serves an international clientele of families, entrepreneurs and institutional investors. The group is also active in Corporate Finance, Private Equity, Real Estate and Fund Services. With a resolutely family-run nature, Edmond de Rothschild has the independence necessary to propose bold strategies and long-term investments, rooted in the real economy. Founded in 1953, the Group had more than CHF 163 billion in assets under management at the end of December 2023, 2,600 employees, and 28 locations worldwide.
PRESS CONTACT:
KENNET: Andrew Malone - kennet@fieldhouseassociates.com
EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD AM: Fany de Villeneuve : +33 6 46 24 69 38 – f.devilleneuve@edr.com
LYON, France - February 2024
Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform for product information, announced today the successful completion of its Series B funding round. Kennet Partners, a growth equity investor focused on capital-efficient companies, has invested €15 million in the company to reinforce Fluid Topics’ premier position on the market by scaling operations across the United States and leveraging the potential of artificial intelligence in customer support applications. Existing investors include Ventech, the pioneering pan-European early-stage VC, and Credit Mutuel Innovation.
Founded in 1999 by Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics pivoted in 2014 when it launched its Content Delivery platform, reinventing how people search, read, and interact with product documentation. "For complex products, documentation often runs to tens of thousands or even millions of pages. This makes it extremely difficult for maintenance and repair technicians to find their way around. Fluid Topics has revolutionized customer support by guiding technicians to the information they need at any stage of their service calls", explains Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics.
Specifically, Fluid Topics’ SaaS-based platform unifies all product knowledge from a company: technical documentation, datasheets, marketing material, multimedia and more. It then delivers it as actionable information tailored to the user in a contextualized, personalized, and secure way, via business applications and digital communication channels.
A global enterprise customer base
Having developed almost exclusively internationally, Fluid Topics now generates 60% of its sales in North America and 40% in Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Nordics, with steady annual growth of over 45%. The company is serving a prominent customer base, including Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders such as Liebherr, Siemens, Johnson Controls, and Teradata. Over the past years, Fluid Topics has become the go-to solution for tech companies of all sizes seeking to enhance user self-service, case deflection, customer support, and field service operations with distinctive business applications fueled by product knowledge.
The funding aims to maintain the growth rate achieved by Fluid Topics in recent years. The company expects to increase sales to over 25 million euros in the next 3 years, while its workforce plans to grow from 80 to 150 employees by 2027.
This growth will be supported by opening a US team in 2024, whose mission will be to target the SMB market, which is more difficult to address from France.
Virtual assistants to guide technicians
The integration of Generative AI is the second major area of development. Artificial intelligence offers major opportunities for applications based on product content and strengthens the market position of Fluid Topics which has over 20 years' experience in semantic search, natural language processing, and content governance. Specifically, Generative AI will enable virtual assistants to guide technicians while working on products, and answer their questions, even the most complex ones.
“Fabrice and the team have built an exciting business in a highly capital-efficient manner. We have been impressed by Fluid Topic’s strong financial performance and high-quality enterprise customer base. We are very excited to be partnering with the company to help it scale in the US and to further capitalize on the opportunities that AI enables,” said Hillel Zidel, Managing Director of Kennet.
Cillian Hilliard, Director, and Hillel Zidel, Managing Director at Kennet, will join Fluid Topics’ board of directors, alongside current members Claire Houry, General Partner at Ventech, and Maxence Valero, Investment Director at Credit Mutuel Innovation. Eric Barroca, founder and former CEO of Nuxeo, a Content Services platform for which Kennet helped accelerate the growth trajectory between 2016 and 2021, will also be appointed as an independent board member. Barroca’s successful development of Nuxeo and deep expertise in AI will further strengthen Fluid Topics’ commitment to strategic expansion.
“This funding round empowers us to accelerate in a market shifting rapidly towards solutions that transform operations and enhance competitiveness. As the leading platform, we take pride in offering cutting-edge technologies with utmost attention to security and seamless implementation,” said Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics.
About Antidot:
Antidot is a SaaS company that leverages over 20 years of advanced research in semantic search, artificial intelligence, and content accessibility to develop Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform for product information.
Fluid Topics unifies product content from all existing sources and delivers it as actionable information tailored to the user and situation. Serving Fortune 500 companies and tech organizations of all sizes, Fluid Topics is the go-to solution for tech companies seeking to enhance customer service and field service operations with distinctive business applications fueled by product knowledge. For more information, visit www.fluidtopics.com.
LONDON, England - February 2024
Screendragon Ltd., a technology leader in SaaS-based workflow automation, announced today that Kennet Partners and Federated Hermes Private Equity, have invested €25m in the software company to drive the continued expansion of the business.
Screendragon is a highly awarded platform serving the agency and marketing sectors. Their platform is designed to automate complex workflows, connect distributed teams and provide visibility and agility at scale. Powering many of the most well-known brands and agencies, it helps teams plan, innovate, create and deliver content to market efficiently and effectively. In a margin-compressed, P&L-constrained environment, where teams are asked to take on increasingly heavier workloads, Screendragon eliminates unnecessary work and compresses cycle time enabling teams to be more efficient while focusing on the work they were hired to do versus managing workflow processes.
The €25 million investment aims to facilitate a commitment to invest in the company’s Irish operation, doubling Screendragon’s workforce in Cork and underpinning the further expansion of the company into the US market. The company’s executive leadership team, and founders, John Briggs, Jan Quant and Fergus Ashe will continue to lead the company with Executive Chairman, Clive Sirkin assuming the role of Chairman of a newly constituted Board of Directors.
Kennet is leading the round alongside Federated Hermes Private Equity, who have over two decades of experience investing alongside private equity firms with $6.3bn of assets under management.
In addition to Clive Sirkin, Cillian Hilliard, Director and Michael Elias, Managing Director of Kennet and Fidel Manolopoulos, Partner & Co-Head of EMEA Investment at Federated Hermes Private Equity will also join Screendragon’s board of directors. An independent board member will be named shortly.
“We were impressed with Screendragon’s bootstrapped growth story. The team has outcompeted software giants to win some of the world's largest brands as customers without raising any institutional capital. Our investment demonstrates the confidence we have in Screendragon’s differentiated technology, the existing team and its blue-chip customer base. With additional resources to strengthen the team in Cork and the US, and scaling of the existing leadership talent, we are confident we can transform the business into a global leader”, said Cillian Hilliard, Director of Kennet.
“Jan, Fergus, Clive and I vetted several investment firms over many months for possible investment,” said John Briggs co-CEO and founder of Screendragon. “Kennet Partners has a proven track record of growing successful businesses. We are looking forward to using this investment and adding resources to accelerate sales, product roadmap, and growth objectives while continuing to deliver the innovative technology and support our existing clients have come to expect.”
About Screendragon
Screendragon is a work automation platform that powers many of the most well-known brand and agency organizations. Over 20+ years, they have developed an industry-leading technology that has been recognized as best in class and highly differentiated. Their software helps brand and agency teams plan, innovate, create and deliver content to market efficiently and effectively. Screendragon’s unique no-code workflow technology enables the company to provide solutions to customers that are both agile and intuitive to use from the get-go.
About Federated Hermes Private Equity
Federated Hermes Private Equity is an active and long-time investor in global private equity. For over 30 years, the firm has specialized in investing in what Federated Hermes considers to be the best and most relevant investment opportunities in global private equity. The objective is to create sustainable returns for investors, no matter what is happening on the global stage via pooled funds and bespoke client solutions. Focus on fund investments and co-investments in buyouts and growth businesses with $6.3bn of assets under management, as of 30 September 2023.
LONDON, England - January 2024
Kennet Partners, Great Hill Partners and EIFO have recently entered into an agreement to sell co-owned portfolio company, Eloomi, a Learning and Development platform provider to Ceridian, a global human capital management (HCM) software company. Kennet will generate a return in excess of 3x their investment in Eloomi.
Founded in 2015, Eloomi is a SaaS learning and development platform that makes it easy for companies worldwide to train and develop their people. Today, thousands of organizations trust Eloomi to manage their learning and people development. Since Kennet first invested in Eloomi in 2019, the company has grown rapidly to 150 employees and now has a significant presence in the Nordics, UK and USA.
Over the last five years Kennet has supported Eloomi’s founder and CEO, Claus Johansen to build Eloomi’s management team, expand Eloomi internationally and to accelerate the company’s growth.
Hillel Zidel, Managing Director, Kennet Partners, said:
“Eloomi is a great example of the type of company in which we seek to invest. It was clear that the business had solid foundations but needed support and capital to scale-up and expand into the UK and US. We were able to support Claus Johansen and the team to accelerate Eloomi’s growth trajectory and are proud of what we have collectively achieved. We wish the company all the best as it moves into the next chapter in its exciting development.”
Claus Johansen, Founder and CEO, Eloomi, said:
At Eloomi we are proud of the journey and collaboration with Kennet Partners over the past 5 years. Kennet gave us great support when needed, challenged us in the right moments, and were professionals that had a real interest in the team, the business and the sector. It has been a blast for us to work with Kennet on our journey. Kennet has been a strong contributor to our success so far. We now look forward to working with the team at Ceridian”
About Eloomi:
Founded in 2015 with offices in Copenhagen, London and Orlando, Eloomi offers a cloud-based Learning and People Development platform to global corporates. Eloomi has succeeded in taking large market share due to its understanding of customer demands and a focus on innovation. Eloomi offers an intuitive, easy to use and out of the box product with strong AI features. For more information: www.eloomi.com
LONDON, England - August 2022
Jiminny, a UK headquartered conversation intelligence provider supporting sales teams across the world, has closed a $16.5 million series A funding round. The round was led by Kennet Partners, a transatlantic growth equity firm, adding to its targeted portfolio of technology growth stage investments.
Sales teams use Jiminny’s platform to record and analyse new and existing customer conversations in real-time. These insights are used by the business to improve performance and ultimately drive revenue and growth. A range of organisations, from FTSE 100 constituent Informa to Europe's leading expense management solution, Pleo, are using the platform.
Jiminny is a market leader in the rapidly growing conversation intelligence market for B2B teams. Demand for conversation intelligence solutions has increased in recent years with more sales teams looking to utilise tools suited to hybrid working, scale up operations and professionalise sales team coaching. In parallel, senior business leaders are looking to use technology to upskill current sales teams against the backdrop of challenging job markets and narrowing budgets.
The funding round will accelerate Jiminny’s recruitment, including its expansion in international markets, and ambitious product development plans. The company will double its R&D budget to continue driving innovation in the nascent conversation intelligence market. Key areas marked for development include solutions to analyse emotion in video, automated scoring of call interactions and real time insights generated from live transcriptions to drive true visibility of performance.
Tom Lavery, CEO and Founder, Jiminny said:
“I’m delighted to announce details of today’s funding round which will further propel Jiminny’s growth and enable us to keep supporting and serving our customers to the high standards we set."
“The pandemic saw a big uptick of interest in solutions that draw insights and analytics from customer conversations to enhance the productivity and internal cultures of hybrid sales teams. Our platform gives the whole revenue team visibility of performance like never before and helps them to collaborate and coach to drive tangible improvements across the team. "
“Kennet’s investment is a resounding vote of confidence in a rapidly growing company and one of the fastest growing verticals in sales technology, despite current global economic headwinds."
Hillel Zidel, Managing Director, Kennet Partners said:
“We believe that conversational intelligence is a long term growth industry and view Jiminny’s value proposition as unique and potentially transformational. The company is a great example of the kind of founder-led, customer centric, capital efficient business that we love to invest in”
“We are hugely excited to be partnering with Jiminny on the next stage of its development.”
Jiminny currently employs 60+ people split across London, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria. Post investment round, the company is aiming to add a further 30+ people to its headcount with plans to establish a larger presence in international markets.
LONDON, England — April 2022
Kennet and Goldman Sachs were recognised as the winners of the ‘France and Benelux Deal of the Year’ Award at the 2022 Private Equity Awards for their investment and exit of Nuxeo. The Private Equity Awards are the longest running and most prestigious Private Equity awards in Europe. Finalists are established through research undertaken by Real Deals. Following this, a panel of expert judges meet to deliberate and select the winner.
Nuxeo is an open source provider of extremely high performance Digital Asset Management and Enterprise Content Management software.
In May 2016, Kennet proactively sourced the opportunity and backed the CEO, Eric Barroca, with an initial direct investment into Nuxeo. Kennet subsequently introduced Goldman Sachs to co-invest as part of a majority buyout transaction. Both Kennet and Goldman Sachs worked to build Nuxeo’s world-class management team and to accelerate the company’s growth as it secured half of the Fortune 10 companies as customers. In March 2021, Hyland Software acquired Nuxeo, generating in excess of a 5x return for its investors.
Nuxeo’s CEO, Eric Barocca, has subsequently joined the Executive Advisory Board of Kennet.