I’m excited to announce Ascent’s newest portfolio company, Sidecar, the leader in programmatic, product-level advertising. We at Ascent have been active investors in the ad tech space with companies like Bizo (acquired by LinkedIn for $175M) and StartApp (Deloitte’s #1 fastest growing tech company in the US ). We’ve seen the power of advanced analytics […]
I’m thrilled today to welcome Peter Lee as the new CEO of RapidMiner. When we invested in RapidMiner in February of this year, we enthusiastically backed founder Ingo Mierswa and his vision to bring powerful, predictive analytics to the business analyst. Under Ingo’s leadership, the RapidMiner team developed the leading next generation predictive analytics platform […]
Today I’m happy to announce Ascent’s newest portfolio company, RapidMiner. In leading the $15M Series B financing of RapidMiner, we are following through on an investment theme I’ve been pursuing for several years – bringing advanced analytics to the business analyst. As we’ve all seen, there’s been tremendous hype around big data, but unfortunately many […]
After 28 years and over 100 investments, we are as passionate as ever about our focus on early-stage enterprise IT venture investing and the continually changing landscape that creates new opportunities. We have created a brief video that captures the fundamentals of Ascent, and includes a few of the CEOs we have had the good […]
This excerpt is taken from a post I wrote that was featured yesterday on Boston.com. I discuss legacy technology companies and how they are buying innovation today and in years to come. (L)ess than one in five global companies deems itself “very effective” at breakthrough innovation, according to a Bain Consulting survey. At current scale, it’s difficult for tech giants […]
At Ascent, we have been focused on the growth of data analytics – or as we called it back in 2008, the ”Explosion of Data” – for close to a decade. In the early days we backed companies such as ZoomInfo, Cymfony (acq. by TNS) and Bizo that comb the web, collecting data to build professional […]
We’ve long been excited at Ascent about the tremendous potential gains from the analysis of data and the complex business problems it can solve. And now I believe we’ve reached the point that organizations need to begin the shift toward data-driven decision making that can move the needle. But for many businesses, this shift is […]
I enjoyed speaking on a big data panel at the E2 Conference on Wednesday in Boston, but the more I participate in these events, the more I agree that “big data” is a silly marketing term, a meaningless catch-all that provides answers to nothing. Perhaps it is needed to make a distinction from traditional data […]
While our singular focus at Ascent is enterprise IT, our portfolio spans a wide range of tech subcategories: Software & SaaS, Data & Analytics, Cloud Business Services, Mobility & Communications, Financial Services & Transaction Technology, and Security & Compliance. Each sector witnesses regular news and innovation, and each has numerous compelling stories. To help facilitate […]
