A highly credentialed new investment fund has been launched into the Australian marketplace and it has already achieved significant success.
Lateral Capital Ventures (LCV) is a boutique venture capital firm specialising in strategic and niche investment within the seed, growth and pre-listing technology market.
LCV currently has operations in Perth and Melbourne and is made up of a stable, core team of highly trained, qualified professionals with significant depth and experience in the creation and execution of high quality bespoke technological solutions and the financial markets.
The fund is a special purpose investment vehicle spun out of Lateral Pty Ltd, an award winning Australian software development leader with an established presence, experience and unparalleled technology expertise spanning over 30 years.
LCV is led by CEO and co-founder Tommy Shin who has over 15 years of experience in corporate account management, sales, marketing and business development. In 2016, he was a winner of the prestigious 40under40 award that recognises and celebrates Western Australia’s 40 leading business entrepreneurs under the age of 40.
According to Mr Shin, LCV is a unique entry into the market due to its focus on investing in opportunities where it is able to value add to its investments via either a technical, financial or commercial contribution, or a combination of the three.
“Lateral Capital Ventures will build on the considerable technical experience of Lateral and its associates, bringing immense value to its businesses and investment companies,” Mr Shin said.
“Our people, process and technology allows us to make the right decisions, maximising shareholder returns based on multiple facets of technology companies.
“Our mission is to identify these diamonds in the sand and support them through the critical stages of development, to greatly increase the chances of a successful outcome for founders and investors alike.
“Taking techniques and a structured process already used in our organisation, we can create a template that we can consistently apply to create success. This becomes the Intellectual Property and core competency of Lateral Capital Ventures.”
Since entering the market in late 2016, Lateral has made its mark by providing key investment support totalling $5.1 milllion for a number of up-and-coming tech companies including: Buzvil; Pay’d, Schrole Group; SC8 Limited and Tamad.
Mr Shin says that with the established networks of the Board and key personnel, he believes there will be no difficulty in LCV maintaining adequate deal flow through the pipeline.
“The challenge is to select the right opportunities amongst the hundreds of deals for maximum returns on investment back to LCV shareholders,” he added.
“We intend to establish a portfolio of opportunities separated into tiers. The higher tiers will represent significant opportunities with high returns, but requiring more investment and time. Lower tiers would have smaller opportunities that could be rapidly executed.
“By investing in opportunities in specific industry verticals, we will, over time combine technology and platforms in order to have a horizontal offering. Additionally, the possibility exists to capture information from the different opportunities into a common database.
“The portfolio also allows us to aggregate our LCV Intellectual Property,” Mr Shin said.