OpenOcean - European Series A Venture Capital

Venture capital for delicious data-intensive software

Investment thesis

The next generation of internet and data-intensive applications needs new paradigms of compute, distributed infrastructure, and software architectures. As the founders of MySQL, which was one of the first B2B software unicorns from Europe, and the successor company MariaDB (now the “M” in the LAMP stack), the OpenOcean team has a deep understanding of the underlying technology – as well as the data stacks – driving the growth of innovative new digital platforms and services. This allows us to identify and invest in game-changing software start-ups that have unique solutions which can rapidly be adopted globally.

As an investor in A-round European B2B software companies, we are industry agnostic and invest in major technology enablers that help solve real challenges, with a particular interest and focus on the following areas:

Artificial intelligence

Application-driven data infrastructure

Intelligent enterprise automation

Open source

Digital platform enablers

Our family

IQM

Fast Lane to Quantum Advantage

LeadooMT

Conversational Marketing Technology

Nosto

World´s Leading E-commerce Personalization Platform

Supermetrics

No1 Marketing Data Provider

Thimble

Digital on-demand insurance for SMBs and the Gig Economy

Truecaller

The trusted communications & payments suite.

DataSeries network

DataSeries is a global network of top founders and executives at data-intensive companies. We have a simple mission to facilitate meaningful connections and challenge collective thinking about the future of data. This OpenOcean–led initiative was started to connect founders and corporate executives with each other, whilst exploring key data topics and industries of interest. It is a way for us to learn and give back.

The network

The 2,000 strong network of data leaders is the foundation for discussing the most relevant data topics. We help each other to connect and solve problems. Reach out to us if you have a specific data topic or question you would like to address, or if you would like to recommend a top data executive.

The roundtables

Every month, we organise highly curated theme-specific roundtable discussions, either in a specific city combined with a dinner or in a virtual format. We select key leaders depending on the topic. Examples of topics are conversational AI, intelligent automation, and small and synthetic data. The sessions allow founders and executives to dive deep into current data challenges and the key opportunities in data-heavy industries and verticals.

The publication

The public face of DataSeries is a Medium publication that allows us to share insights gathered via our network. We work with hundreds of writers from across the world, and our focus is predominantly on how data is transforming industries and on best practices for processing data, such as machine learning techniques.

Our focus areas

We highlight a specific key topic from our investment thesis and combine selected inputs from our writers. We partner with top stakeholders in the space to host discussions and interviews, and then we share those insights with our readers. Our current highlight: the rise of intelligent enterprise automation.

The team

Engineers, dreamers and do-ers who have scaled several software businesses over the past two decades. Now scaling the venture firm we always wanted. Meet the team.