Germany-based media group M DuMont Schauberg has merged its corporate venturing portfolio of 20 holdings into a new multi-corporate fund.
Jörg Binnenbrücker (pictured), managing partner of DuMont Venture, has formed Capnamic Ventures with Christian Siegele, a former senior partner at UK-listed private equity firm 3i, as the other managing partner. Others in the team include Binnenbrücker’s DuMont Ventures colleagues André Burchart, Rouven Dresselhaus, Alexander Drusio and Thorben Rothe as investment managers.
Binnenbrücker said: “In addition to its own fund, Capnamic Ventures will take over management of the entire portfolio of DuMont Venture, the investment vehicle of M DuMont Schauberg, currently holding over 20 portfolio companies.”
This DuMont portfolio includes Doo, Fairrank, Learnship, Contilla, Livedome, MovingImage24, Picanova, Plista, Popula, Radio.de, Servtag, Simfy, Tanked, StreamD, YourVideoCard and Zooroyal.de, ReBuy, Lieferando and Navabi. DuMont has also exited Tradoria (to Rakuten), Farbflut (to IVentureCapital), GimiGames (to Planet49), Northworks Software (to Travian Games) and Solegro (to @Leisure).
Capnamic said it had raised a fund of “in the tens of millions” of euros with commitments from corporations, including DuMont Schauberg.
The other limited partners in the fund include corporations Universal Music, Nord-West-Zeitung, HR Alpha, Gauselmann, NRW.BANK and Rheinische Post, family offices Wecken & Cie (on behalf of serial technology entrepreneur Klaus Wecken who has coinvested with DuMont in ZooRoyal and Simfy) and Usbaecker Capital (on behalf of Ulf Usbaecker).
Binnenbrücker said: “At Capnamic Ventures we bring together incumbent and new players and through our fund concept, network and investment experience we are ideally positioned to create win-win situations for all parties involved.”
By email he added the breadth of the limited partners was helpful: “First, you can cluster. Second, you get more independent and so more interesting for the better teams.”
The investment focus for Capnamic includes mobile, e-commerce, gaming, payment, advertising and software-as-a-service.
Siegele added: “A multi-corporate approach creates value for non-[inter]net native companies as well as start-ups. We focus on consumer-related topics based in the German-speaking market, which are scalable and marketable via digital channels. The first investments that we will make through Capnamic will be in the seed to start-up phase.”
The fundraising process was supported by financial adviser IEG – Investment Banking, with P+P Pöllath + Partner as legal counsel.