M12 (venture capital)

M12
Corporate venture fund
Founded 2016
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Number of locations
 5 offices: Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Tel-Aviv, London
Key people
 Peggy Johnson
(EVP, Microsoft)
Nagraj Kashyap
(Managing director)
Number of employees
 14
Website m12.vc

M12, formerly Microsoft Ventures, is a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft. Founded in March 2016,[1] its mission is to be an active, strategic partner at key stages of a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. It supports not only company objectives, but customers, partners and the ecosystem more broadly. The fund is managed by Nagraj Kashyap, formerly of Qualcomm Ventures.

History

Background

Rahul Sood created the Bing Fund, Microsoft's first incubation fund for startups, and eventually Microsoft consolidated their global startup activities under Sood’s leadership. In June 2013, he launched Microsoft Ventures. Microsoft Ventures was used as an umbrella for all of Microsoft's accelerator and seed-stage funding operations, with the term decreasing in visiblity after Sood departed the company.[1]

In August 2014, Microsoft Ventures and the Deshpande Foundation launched the Sandbox Startups incubator with an initiative to set up a 20,000 square feet area for incubation in the city of Hubli. The main intention of this initiative was to ensure that better entrepreneurial support would be given to those who reside outside of big metropolises in India, removing the inevitability of having to relocate to such places.[2]

Official founding

In March 2016, Microsoft launched the Microsoft Ventures venture capital fund. The operation previously known as Microsoft Ventures was renamed Microsoft Accelerator, with a focus on "start-up enablement" instead of startup investments.[1]

On April 11, 2017, it was reported that the security company Synack had raised $21 million from Microsoft Ventures, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Singtel.[3] In late 2017, the company has invested in artificial intelligence with a new AI startup competition,[4] and 3-D printing with Markforged.[5]

Name change to M12

In April 2018, Microsoft Ventures officially changed its name to M12, to avoid confusion with a previous accelerator program of the same name.[6] The M stands for Microsoft, and the 12 refers to the number of letters in the word entrepreneur.[6]

Accelerator Program

Zoomcar was a member of Microsoft's Accelerator Plus program in Bangalore in Spring 2014.[7] This program is designed to provide more tailored assistance to later-stage start-ups as they scale their business and raise capital.[8] In March 2015, Tripdelta took part in the third batch of the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Berlin.[9] In October 2015 Farmflo was selected to join the Microsoft Ventures Accelerate Programme in London.[10][11] Appknox was a graduate of the fifth batch of the Microsoft Ventures program.[12]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lunden, Ingrid (May 31, 2016). "Microsoft confirms Microsoft Ventures VC arm, renames old one 'Microsoft Accelerator'". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 18, 2017.
  2. ↑ "Microsoft Ventures, Deshpande Foundation launch Sandbox Startups". businesstoday.in. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  3. ↑ Kuchler, Hannah (April 11, 2017). "Hacker-for-hire company Synack raises $21m". Financial Times. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
  4. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (October 10, 2017). "Microsoft Ventures, Madrona and others launch $3.5M AI startup competition". TechCrunch.
  5. ↑ Vanian, Jonathan (November 1, 2017). "Microsoft Just Made Its First 3-D Printing Investment In This Startup". Fortune. Retrieved November 12, 2017.
  6. 1 2 "Microsoft Ventures rebrands as M12 to avoid 'confusion' about its purpose". venturebeat.com. 2018-04-30. Retrieved 2018-04-30.
  7. ↑ "Microsoft Accelerator Launches New Program For Late Stage Startups In India". TechCrunch. February 11, 2014.
  8. ↑ Economictimes.com (Feb 11, 2014). "16 tech startups selected for Microsoft Ventures Accelerator Program's latest batch". The Economic Times. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  9. ↑ Berlin Accelerator Kicks Off Batch 3 with 8 Diverse Startups, Microsoft Ventures. Archived 2015-12-23 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ↑ "Farmflo secures backing from Microsoft". Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  11. ↑ "Farmflo selected to join Microsoft mentoring programme". Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  12. ↑ Microsoft Ventures graduates 11 tech startups from fifth batch of India Accelerator program, Microsoft, December 5, 2014, retrieved July 22, 2017
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