At the early stages of a company the founder is constantly dealing with fundraising. Preparing, Doing, Closing and then prepping for the next round. Our goal is to build deep trust relationships with our entrepreneurs, invest early and double down on the company in the following round. Seed and A stages are riddled with challenges and are the riskiest stage of the company. We firmly believe the founders should focus on building product market rather than constant fundraising.
By doubling down we de-risk both our investment and the entrepreneurs
B2C
Focus on the use of technology to remove friction out of common use with a focus on newly created markets.
SMB's
Using technology to take out the friction from common business cases with a focus on sticky services not previously available to SMB's.
Blockchain
Focus on infrastructure which underpins the platforms of the future.
We see many parallels in the need for marketing and strong brand positioning between Blockchain technologies and decentralization and consumer offerings.
History
Benson Oak bought AVG in 2004 when it was a 20 person team in Brno, Czech Republic and became actively involved in assisting the management of the Company. At the time, AVG had $5M in revenue but had just started to offer its anti-virus product for free.
Benson Oak became involved in the operations and especially in developing the freemium model as the company grew to over 100 million users, becoming a global leader in Internet Security solutions for consumers and small businesses. In 2005, Enterprise Investors and Intel Capital bought into AVG in a secondary transaction and in 2009, TA Associates entered. Overall, BOCs investment in AVG returned 100x to its investors as the company exceeded a $1 billion market cap after going public on the NYSE in February 2012.
Highlights
Robert Cohen spearheaded BOC’s acquisition of AVG and was deeply involved in the business for the next 8 years. Aside from being a Board member, Robert also served as interim CFO, managed AVG’s fund raising activities.
In 2011, he joined the senior management team responsible for global M&A and strategic corporate development activity and gained deep operational experience via the execution and integration of five acquisitions and two strategic partnerships, in the US, Germany and Israel. Robert was part of the management team as it went public.
