2018 Ascent Recap

Welcome to Ascent’s 2018 recap blog post. We couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to work with the smartest, most passionate and kind entrepreneurs and investors on a daily basis. 2018 was filled with lunchtime laughter, personal and professional growth, and plenty of new projects. We look forward to working with you in 2019 and beyond. Thank you for your support.

Here is a list of 2018 highlights:

1 – We led investments in three new portfolio companies: Connected2Fiber, gr8 People, and empow. All of these new portfolio companies were sourced via a combination of proactive thematic research (connectivity, HR tech, and cybersecurity), and referrals and introductions from friends in the industry.

2 – At Ascent, we have a more concentrated approach to investing, believing that investing in fewer companies per fund, and spending significant time with each of them, produces the best outcome for all. In 2018, we were active board members and advisors to 17 portfolio companies. We helped these companies with executive hires, organizational design, go-to-market strategy, partnership discussions, product strategy, and M&A processes.

3 – Speaking of executive hires, the majority of early growth stage companies are consistently looking to build out their executive team. Our portfolio hired more than two dozen new executives, many of which were Ascent referrals. At Promoboxx, we were lucky to recruit Mark DiAntonio as VP of Engineering, who held senior-level positions at DraftKings, Warner Brother Games, and Turbine. Diane Smith, the CEO of gr8 People was ecstatic to recruit Rachael McCarthy, who was the CFO of prior Ascent portfolio company CloudLock, which sold to Cisco for $293M in 2016.

4 – Congratulations to two of our companies, which attracted new CEOs: Ernie Cormier of Promoboxx and Lenny Nash of Clickfox, to lead their next phase of growth.

5 – We also supported four of our portfolio companies in follow-on deals. It’s incredible to see these companies make such incredible progress!

6 – Codeship exit to Cloudbees, giving Cloudbees access to 100,000+ developers across 2,400 customers, all using a turnkey, cloud-based CI/CD platform for their everyday work. CodeShip is now a part of complete CI/CD solution that has achieved impressive scale and industry reach.

While we enjoyed numerous professional highlights and growth opportunities in 2018, we are most proud of our very own personal highlight: Lauren Peck, our office manager, gave birth to beautiful baby Jack on November 26, 2018 at 2:25am. He made sure to pay his future colleagues a visit in late December. He is easily the best looking Ascent team member to date!