Idinvest Partners is a pan-European private equity manager focused on the low and middle-market segments. With over 6 billion euros under management, the company has developed several complementary areas of expertise, including equity investments in buyout deals focusing on both mid-size as well as young innovative European companies; primary investments in European private equity funds focusing primarily on the middle market segment; secondary investments; mezzanine investments in Europe; and private equity consulting.  Idinvest Partners’ recent success stories include Criteo, Clear2Pay, Meetic, Prosensa, Converteam, Kwik Fit, Lastminute.com, Dailymotion, Deezer, Talend, Synthesio, Menlook, Vestiaire Collective, Pretty Simple, Curse.com, Withings, Kantox, Secret Escapes, Happn, Peakon, Dayuse, Botify, Financefox, Azalead and many more.

Idinvest Partners

Elaia is an independent venture capital firm, focused on the digital economy and deep tech. With over €700m under management, Elaia invests in high-potential disruptive startups from the first financing rounds to the emergence of global leaders. With more than 75 years of cumulated experience in both venture capital and digital industries, the investment team offers close, proactive, and relevant support to its entrepreneurs. Elaia was founded in 2002 by Philippe Gire and Xavier Lazarus and is based in Paris, Ile-de-France, France.

Elaia

Index Ventures is a venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco, and Geneva, helping entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.  Since 1996, Index has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to reshape the world. The companies they’ve started include Adyen, Deliveroo, Dropbox, Farfetch, King, Slack, and Supercell.

Index Ventures

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. Their portfolio includes pinterest, shopify, twilio, yelp, linkedin, pagerduty, docusign, wix, fiverr, and toast, and has $19 billion of assets under management.

Bessemer Venture Partners

SoftBank Group provides venture funding and strategic support to exceptional entrepreneurs building disruptive enduring businesses. They are a small team of experienced entrepreneurs and investors who take an ''active'' approach to helping their companies reach their full potential. They manage $600 million across three funds and invest across a company’s lifecycle, from early to growth stages.   Through their close ties to a number of Asia’s leading mobile, internet and technology companies – including strategic partners SoftBank Corp, Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Group – SoftBank Capital offers unique expertise to businesses seeking to address the Asian market.  Since 1995, SoftBank Capital has partnered with internet pioneers such as Criteo, Gilt Groupe, OMGPOP (Zynga), betaworks, BuzzFeed, Buddy Media (Salesforce.com), Huffington Post (AOL), Associated Content (Yahoo!), Danger (Microsoft), Geocities (Yahoo!), E*Trade and Yahoo!.

SoftBank Capital

Adams Street Partners is a global private market investment management firm that offers comprehensive solutions for its investors. As one of the independent, employee-owned firms, Adams Street has established a reputation for strong performance, an extensive knowledge base, and a disciplined investment approach that values quality over quantity. For more than 45 years, Adams Street has gained the experience to successfully manage through some of the most challenging investment cycles. The collective knowledge of the Adams Street team works collaboratively to leverage the global resources of the Firm in navigating the complexities of private markets. Its mission as a premier private markets investment manager is to provide world-class investment performance and maintain the confidence of our investors through our deep understanding of the global private marketplace and deliver exemplary client service.

Adams Street Partners

Yahoo is the world's largest start-up, which means that they move fast and always let their users lead the way. Founded in 1994 by two Stanford PhD candidates, they've grown into a company that helps you find what you're looking for on any Internet-connected device. Their employees are rewarded for curiosity and they celebrate explorers, relying on their passionate and transformative talent to do what's right for their users. As a leader in global daily habits like email, entertainment, news and sports, they strive to inspire, delight and entertain. By infusing their products with beauty and personality driven by their users, every Yahoo experience feels made to order.

Yahoo! Japan

The Employee Stock Option Fund provides current and former employees of venture-backed companies with financial help needed to exercise options and cover associated taxes. It has a due diligence strategy and transaction protocol to evaluate and close transactions very quickly. The ESO Fund provides a new approach to exercising stock options that provides superior ROI potential through leverage and tax optimization. The fund also provides individuals who have already exercised private stock options with partial liquidity on the same terms that allows the owners to recover capital and eliminate downside risk while still retaining the potential upside from the stock.  ESO Fund was formed by Stephen Roberts, Jimmy Lackie, and Scott Chou in 2012.

Employee Stock Option Fund

Sapphire is a venture capital firm that partners with visionary teams and venture funds to build companies. For nearly two decades, Sapphire has been investing capital, resources, and expertise in innovative startups and technology-focused venture funds around the world. With more than $6.8B in Assets Under Management across Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners, and Sapphire Sport, and with team members in Austin, London, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, Sapphire is well-positioned to help scale companies and venture funds, elevating them to become global category leaders.

Sapphire Ventures

Omega invests in Intelligent Software for the Enterprise breakout companies that leverage Artificial and Machine Intelligence to deliver best-of-breed solutions and new revenue streams. The firm strives to be the partner of choice for rapidly growing and consequential companies that can benefit society-at-large and help maximize human potential through technology.

Omega Venture Partners

Criteo

Founded by a small group of great minds at a start-up incubator in Paris, Criteo has become a global leader in commerce marketing. Driving this growth: machine-learning technology, data and performance at scale, and measurable ROI for our clients, as well as the ingenuity and spirit of more than 2,800 employees worldwide.

<div>Criteo is a digital advertising firm based in France, providing solutions to marketers, brands, and retailers for creating awareness and driving sales. The firm offers an 1) AI-powered self-serve ad platform for managing and analyzing advertising campaigns across a variety of channels, 2) a retail media ad platform, a demand-side ad platform (DSP), and 3) an AI engine for ad personalization. As of June 2022, 22,000+ firms and 100+ global retailers were using Criteo&rsquo;s services across a variety of industries including the top five holding companies as well as ~50% of the top 25 retailers in the US and EMEA which include brands such as Bloomingdale&rsquo;s, Deliveroo, and Lowe&rsquo;s Canada.</div>

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

<div>
 
 Criteo is a digital advertising firm based in France, providing solutions to marketers, brands, and retailers for creating awareness and driving sales. The firm offers an 1) AI-powered self-serve ad platform for managing and analyzing advertising campaigns across a variety of channels, 2) a retail media ad platform, a demand-side ad platform (DSP), and 3) an AI engine for ad personalization. As of June 2022, 22,000+ firms and 100+ global retailers were using Criteo&rsquo;s services across a variety of industries including the top five holding companies as well as ~50% of the top 25 retailers in the US and EMEA which include brands such as Bloomingdale&rsquo;s, Deliveroo, and Lowe&rsquo;s Canada.
 
 
 Criteo specializes in commerce media, leveraging commerce data to target customers through their shopping journeys. Its dynamic ad retargeting product can analyze customer activity and provide targeted product recommendations in real time and accounted for 72% of the firm&rsquo;s revenue in Q3 2021. However, in recent years, given the growing challenges due to privacy concerns over the use of third-party cookies, the firm has been transitioning its clients towards its retail media platform. The platform contributed to the growth in its retail media solutions, which experienced a 58% YoY revenue growth in 2021 and added new clients during the year, including Lowe&rsquo;s, Walmart Canada, Best Buy, Target, and Nordstrom.
 
 
 In line with this, the firm has made a number of acquisitions in order to further develop its retail media ad platform, including 1) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/sectors/work/updates/7300">
 IPONWEB
 </a>
 (ad marketplace platform) purchased for USD 380 million (December 2021) and 2) Mabaya (ad monetization tool for retailers) acquired in May 2021. Leveraging on its acquisition of IPONWEB, 
 the firm unveiled a specialized 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13190">
 demand-side ad platform (DSP)
 </a>
 for enterprise marketers in the retail media sector, while also introducing 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19517">
 Commerce Grid,
 </a>
 a dedicated supply-side platform (SSP) designed to serve agencies and publishers. 
 In March 2023, the firm acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16908">
 Brandcrush,
 </a>
 an Australian platform that facilitates the purchase and sale of omnichannel retail media.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The firm also 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8258">
 partnered with Bluecore
 </a>
 , a retail-specific marketing campaign automation platform to allow Sitecore&rsquo;s users to leverage Bluecore&rsquo;s customer predictive models (February 2022). 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 2022, Criteo recorded 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16239?industryIds=62">
 ex-TAC revenue
 </a>
 (net of traffic acquisition cost) of USD 928 million (a 1% YoY growth) and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 29%. As of 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16239?industryIds=62">
 Q4 2022,
 </a>
 the firm expects ex-TAC revenue (including IPONWEB) to be high single digit to low double-digit growth, and the adjusted EBITDA margin is estimated to be 28%.&nbsp;
 
 
 In August 2022 it was reported that Criteo faces a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12158">
 potential USD 65 million fine
 </a>
 from France&rsquo;s data protection authority due to GDPR consent breach suite for the firm's suite of tracking techniques and data processing practices. The firm was also the subject of an investigation from the French Competition Authority. The firm stated that it had achieved a favorable decision from the authority and that the latter would restore Criteo&rsquo;s partner status and partner access to Meta&rsquo;s ad inventory globally.&nbsp; 
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Outbrain is an algorithm-based content recommendation and discovery platform that curates native advertising content from the open web, providing personalized content for brands to increase customer engagement. Outbrain&rsquo;s customers include leading news media outlets such as CNN, MSN, and Sky News, serving more than a billion monthly users (by September 2021). Outbrain also allows content publishers to amplify its reach by supplying content to the platform. As of September 2021, customers could access 7,000+ online content sources including content by the Washington Post, Guardian, and BBC.&nbsp;
 
 
 Outbrain has been a pioneer in the content recommendation space and was the first to introduce an algorithm-based content recommendation in 2008. It was also the first to introduce a self-service platform for content recommendation in 2012. Outbrain has made a series of acquisitions over the years while making enhancements to its product offerings. In May 2021, it tested &ldquo;QualityRatings,&rdquo; a tool that implements quality guidelines for the content featured on its platform while using machine learning and AI to create a more personalized user experience. In April 2022, Outbrain&rsquo;s platform was 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9907">
 integrated with ID5
 </a>
 to provide a privacy-first customer identification solution. In September 2022, the firm launched 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13122">
 Keystone
 </a>
 , a business optimization solution for publishers. In November 2021, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6992">
 Outbrain acquired vi
 </a>
 , a contextual video intelligence platform for USD 55 million to grow it's CTV and other display ads offerings. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Outbrain&rsquo;s revenue model is structured as a &ldquo;pay per click&rdquo; model with the revenue being shared with publishers of the content. In FY 2022, the firm 
 reported a revenue of USD 992.1 million (a 2% YoY dip). For the 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16860">
 full year of 2023E,
 </a>
 the firm expected to achieve a minimum Ex-TAC gross profit of USD 237 million and generate an adjusted EBITDA of at least USD 28 million. 
 
 
 Outbrain was listed on the NASDAQ in July 2021, where it raised USD 160 million at a valuation of USD 1.25 billion. Ahead of its listing, Outbrain also raised USD 200 million in the form of senior subordinated secured notes from Baupost Group. Since then the firms share price has fallen steeply, and as of July 2022 the firm was&nbsp; worth USD 300 million, equivalent to a ~75% drop in its value. In response, Outbrain is reported to have 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11880">
 shed ~3% of its total workforce
 </a>
 . 
 
</div>

Outbrain

<div>
 
 Marin Software is an adTech firm offering a suite of solutions for brands looking to conduct search, social media, and ecommerce advertising. The firm&rsquo;s &ldquo;MarineOne&rdquo; solution enables Brands to integrate their data under a single platform; coupled with machine learning tools, marketers can optimize ad spending across multiple platforms. In the case of search and social media advertising, Brands can increase their visibility across a number of search engines and social media platforms including Google, Facebook, and Apple Search Ads.&nbsp;
 
 
 In recent years the firm has been making enhancements to transform its Marine One Software as a complete marketing campaign management &amp; intelligence solution. In line with the firm expanded its ecommerce advertising solution capabilities by increasing the number of integrations to include Criteo&rsquo;s commerce media platform and Instacart&rsquo;s advertising platform. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12159">
 2022
 </a>
 , the firm rolled out a number of new product and features including 1) MarinOne bidding, the firm's ad bidding marketplace, 2) MarinOne support, to enable advertisers to improve ad performance with multi-edit ad scheduling solutions, 3) social rules engine, to help automate workflows, and 4) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15019">
 Budget Optimizer
 </a>
 , an ad budget management solution. More 
 recently, in April 2023, the firm introduced an automation tool 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17565">
 &ldquo;MarinOne Scripts,&rdquo;
 </a>
 which integrates Python scripting with its MarineOne platform, providing marketers with customized and data-driven solutions to optimize campaigns.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of October 2021, several brands from varied industries, including Nissan, American Eagle outfitters, and Harmony, use the firm&rsquo;s solutions.
 
 
 In 2021, the firm made a number of new initiatives in 2021, including an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7635">
 integration with Amazon Ads
 </a>
 and a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6973">
 partnership with CitrusAd 
 </a>
 to expand the ecommerce capabilities of its platform. More recently, in January 2023, the company announced an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16172">
 integration with Yahoo
 </a>
 to broaden access to programmatic ad content. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Marin Software was listed on the NASDAQ in March 2013, raising USD 105 million and was valued at USD 432 million. However, since then the firm has been experiencing a decline in performance; in 2022, the firm recorded a revenue of 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16613?industryIds=62">
 USD 20 million (a 18% YoY drop)
 </a>
 compared to the ~USD 100 million revenue in 2016. The reasons analysts cite for this are 1) weaknesses in its search advertising model and 2) not selling digital ads, which is a growth area for lead generation firms.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

Marin Software

<div>
 
 Founded in China, Terminus claims to have the first account-based marketing (ABM) platform that unifies the marketing and sales teams&rsquo; roles under a single platform. Terminus specializes in B2B marketing and, according to the firm, its &ldquo;Terminus Data Studio&rdquo; has one of the largest B2B account databases, which by September 2021, covered more than 70 million businesses. Terminus&rsquo;s customer data platform (CDP) is fully integrated with its marketing automation platform, through which teams can run multi-channel targeted campaigns across many channels including email, ad networks, live chat, and the web. This can then be analyzed with Terminus&rsquo; suite of analytics and attribution tools. In March 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17406">
 launched Prospect Engine,
 </a>
 a new data solution, to help users identify high-quality accounts and contacts displaying buying signals. 
 By September 2021, Terminus served more than 1,000 customers, including Salesloft, Foundry, and Quantum Workplace.
 
 
 According to a study done by Forrester (in Q2 2020), Terminus has been recognized among the ABM platform leaders. 
 
 
 Through a series of acquisitions, Terminus has transformed into a marketing cloud platform offering a range of services. Its two latest acquisitions took place within 12 months. In November 2020, it acquired Growflare, a lead generation and account-based intelligence platform catering to B2B startups, followed by B2B CDP Zylotech in September 2021. Terminus hoped to capitalize on these to build the most comprehensive ABM platform on the market.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Terminus raised USD 50 million in debt financing from CIBC innovation banking in November 2021. The funding was used to support international expansion, product development, and further acquisitions. In February 2021 when it raised USD 90 million in Series C funding, it was valued at approximately USD 400 million.
 
</div>

Terminus

<div>
 
 Founded in France, Brevo 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18241">
 (formerly Sendinblue)
 </a>
 began as an email marketing automation platform catering to small and medium-scale businesses (SMB). It has since extended its services to become an all-in-one marketing platform catering to 300,000+ customers across 180 countries by end December 2022. The range of services found on Brevo&rsquo;s platform includes email and SMS marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, landing page creation, and Facebook ad management, among others. In November 2022, the firm launched an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14388">
 integrated meetings solution
 </a>
 that brings together scheduling, video conferencing, and payment solutions. In March 2023, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17462">
 unveiled &ldquo;Conversations&rdquo;
 </a>
 to manage customer conversations across messaging channels in one centralized location.
 
 
 Brevo&rsquo;s platform is compared with other well-known competitors such as Mailchimp and Hubspot and is commended for its live support and fair pricing, making it a strong contender in the SMB space.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has expanded its product offering through a series of acquisitions during 2021-2022. Brevo acquired three firms in September 2021 for USD 47 million: 1) Metrilo, a provider of customer analytics and marketing services for ecommerce stores, 2) Chatra, a live chat messenger app for increasing online sales, and 3) PushOwl, a customer re-engagement website that uses web-based push notifications. In March 2022, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9009">
 acquired MeetFox
 </a>
 , a meeting scheduling and video conferencing platform. In September 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13360">
 acquired Yodel.io,
 </a>
 an Austrian cloud-based phone system provider, to enable additional customer touchpoints, and reduce the overall digital marketing spend for SMBs. More recently, in February 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16271?industryIds=62">
 acquired Captain Wallet,
 </a>
 a mobile wallet marketing platform, to broaden its reach internationally.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 Brevo raised USD 160 million in its Series B round in September 2020 with participation from Bridgepoint, Bpifrance, Blackrock, and Partech. The firm planned to utilize the funds to increase its presence in the US, where it has experienced a 100% YoY growth since 2018. 
 
 
 The firm achieved 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15834">
 USD 100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
 </a>
 at the end of 2022 while maintaining a positive EBITDA position.&nbsp;
 
</div>

Brevo

<div>
 
 Acquia provides a digital experience platform (DXP) to support medium to large enterprises that use Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS) that provides the back-end infrastructure for websites and by September 2021, powered approximately 2.1% of websites on the internet. The core product offered by Acquia is a marketing cloud that provides a full suite of services to manage the customer journey. The platform features a customer data platform (CDP), unifying data across multiple sources; sales automation tools to deliver personalized marketing campaigns across multiple delivery channels; marketing campaign management tools to manage distributed marketing teams; and a content management platform to organize and monitor content. 
 
 
 Having been built on the Drupal framework, which does not require any programming skills to implement, Acquia’s marketing cloud claims to be more accessible and agile than enterprise cloud solutions provided by incumbents such as Adobe and Oracle. In 2021, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report named Acquia a leader in DXP platforms, while a study done by Forrester (in July 2021) found that customers of Acquia’s DXP solutions experienced a payback on their investment in less than six months, generating an average return on investment (ROI) of 589% over three years. 
 
 
 Acquia has made several investments and enhancements to its DXP platform. In January 2021, Acquia, in partnership with Commercetools and Lucidworks, launched “Acquia Digital Commerce,” a service for creating personalized digital shopping experiences for customers. In September 2021, Acquia acquired Widen Enterprises, a digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) software company, for an undisclosed amount. As a result, customers can have a fully integrated experience on the platform, while the acquisition also added a further 700+ customers. The firm has also added a number of self-serve features to its CDP such as 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11422">
 “right to erasure”
 </a>
 to bolster the privacy and security features of its platform to cater to enterprise users. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 By September 2021, Acquia counted one in four Fortune 500 companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, and Xerox, among its customers. 
 
 
 In June 2022, Acquia 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11352">
 partnered with Workato
 </a>
 (enterprise-level workflow automation platform) to integrate with Acquia’s CDP to expand enterprise use of the platform. The integration added 100+ technology integrations compatible with Acquia’s marketing cloud. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Acquia was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in September 2019 for USD 1 billion. 
 
 
 
</div>

Acquia

Marketing automation provides measurement and attribution solutions to measure marketing effectiveness

The in-game advertising segment is in development and has a niche relevance to this area

Personalization tools are mainly used in AdTech and marketing campaign automation

Uses AI/ML to enable marketing automation, making it a core part of many companies' products

Metaverse advertising is being explored by AdTech segments for in-game advertising

Startups offering tools for finding and attracting potential customers with targeted ads.

Criteo

Recent Updates

Criteo launches Commerce Max DSP in general availability and unveils retailer monetization solution suite

Criteo extends partnership with Omnicom Media Group, delivering advanced commerce insights for advertisers

Criteo posts robust Q2 2023 revenue growth; maintains FY2023 guidance

Criteo fined EUR 44 million for targeted advertising GDPR breaches

Criteo launches supply-side solution for commerce media

Criteo beats Q1 2023 consensus estimates; maintains FY2023 guidance

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