Vodafone Ventures head Peter Barry (pictured) has left this summer after nearly eight and a half years to set up advisory group Tane Mobile.
Barry had led Vodafone’s corporate venturing team from a pure scouting focused effort in early 2004 to one of the most active units worldwide – with 20 of the 25 deals coming in the past two years. His departure in June came as Frederic Lardieg left Vodafone Ventures’ Europe office to join venture capital firm Octopus.
By email Barry said he was also doing some consulting work in Australia so already fully booked in terms of time.
He said on his LinkedIn page that he had created a profitable fund with three notable exits: Snapin (sold to Nuance for more than $200m), Playspan (sold to Visa for more than $200m), and Amobee (sold to Singtel for $320m); and accelerated 20 initiatives through early identification of compelling innovations, such as mobile advertising, social networking, machine to machine, user generated content, bring your own device, mobile commerce, mobile analytics and big data and mobile health (wellness).
He added that 50 companies were deployed in Vodafone through the scouting and investing activities, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Starent, Pontis, Byte Mobile, Amobee and Mobile Iron, and its investment portfolio consists of companies such as ItsOn, CellEra, Caringo, Perfecto Mobile, Pontis, Finsphere, VoucherCloud and LocalResponse.
In March, ItsOn raised $4.06m of a $8m round from five investors, according to its regulatory filing. ItsOn directors include David Brown from Oak Hill Venture Partners, Jim Straight, ex-Verizon, Charles Giancarlo, managing director at Silverlake, and Vodafone said it was an investor. Previously raised about $6m since 2009.
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