OneVentures invests in international software company Phocas, bringing business back to Australia and positioning the company for international expansion

OneVentures provides $10M equity and credit financing to Australian founded Phocas

(From left to right) Grant Chamberlain (Partner, OneVentures), Phil Dodds (Co-CEO, Phocas), Dr Michelle Deaker (Managing Partner, OneVentures) and Myles Glashier (Founder and Co-CEO, Phocas).

Sydney, AU, 16 March 2020 — Well-known Australian venture capital firm, OneVentures, which focuses on investment in high growth, transformative technology and healthcare companies, has invested $10M into business intelligence software company Phocas through two of its Funds. The firm has just provided $3M in credit funding through the 1V Venture Credit Fund IV following on from a $7M investment in equity funding out of its Innovation & Growth Fund II in June 2018 which was used to help the company re-capitalise following the departure of several retiring shareholders. OneVentures is the only institutional investor and has worked alongside the management team to support them in restructuring the business, expanding the leadership team and developing strategy to accelerate growth.

“OneVentures forms a strong partnership with portfolio companies. Since our investment in Phocas, we have seen the value of the company increase more than 5-fold. Phocas is a company to watch into the future,” commented Dr Michelle Deaker, Managing Partner at OneVentures who joined the board with OneVentures investment.

OneVentures knows that great companies have strong leadership teams. Phocas was founded by Myles Glashier, an Australian living in the UK, to enable businesses to understand their ERP data more easily. Phil Dodds, having had experience running and exiting his own software company, joined in 2009 as CEO, seeing the opportunity to shift and recreate a full cloud-based application Phocas is now a lot more than just data analytics and visualisation tools. A team of Ai specialists are developing real-time intelligence solutions for Phocas’ 1800 global customers.

Nick Gainsley, Principal, Venture Credit at OneVentures and former Principal of leading EU venture credit firm, Kreos Capital, who led the most recent debt financing said, “As a venture credit provider, we look closely at the metrics of the underlying business such as lifetime value of customers, cost of acquisition and annual recurrent revenues. Phocas performs strongly across all metrics including net positive churn. Our customer surveys were overwhelmingly positive”.

Phocas is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company with operations in US, Australia and the UK. It is a growing, profitable company with over $40M in recurring revenue. It competes with companies like Tableau and DOMO. Indeed, this young Australian business tops the BI BARC index in 34 of 50 categories against their larger peers like Microsoft PowerBI and Tableau. Phocas now boasts over 1,800 customers including for example, Repco, Bayer, ConvaTec, Sistema, WD40, Prochem, Bunzl and Hairhouse.

OneVentures has helped the company shift from a steady organic growth profile onto an accelerated growth footing. White-label partnership deals with major ERP vendors, an enhanced Ai capability, development and roll-out of multiple ancillary products, expansion into new geographies and strategic acquisitions will propel Phocas into global dominance and likely another Australian technology success. Phocas is preparing for a large strategic capital raise to support this development and there are similarities to other well-known technology success stories.

“Michelle and the OneVentures team have been fantastic to work with and through their active participation and extensive, relevant experience, Myles and I have found them to be a great value-add to the business objectives of our rapidly growing company,” Phil Dodds commented.

The investment in Phocas is a strong example of companies that OneVentures will target in their new Growth Fund V. The firm is highly operational with portfolio companies favouring proprietary deals where they can build confidence with the management teams and drive value for the founding shareholders and OneVentures Investors. OneVentures started its engagement with Phocas almost two years before the first investment.

About OneVentures

OneVentures is one of Australia’s leading venture capital firms, with over $400M in funds under management. But we do more than invest. We take companies to that all-important next stage, by actively shaping their future. We apply our years of international experience, operational and executional expertise to accelerate the growth of our portfolio companies.

A global growth focus drives our investment selection with our current portfolio including companies with truly innovative products tackling multi-billion-dollar problems, from needle-free vaccinations to virtual communications to adaptive e-learning.

Game changers, that deliver lasting gains.

Learn more at www.one-ventures.com.

About the 1V Venture Credit Fund

The OneVentures Credit Fund launched in August 2018, raising up to AU$100M in funds available for high-growth technology companies.

The Fund is focused on rapidly growing companies that are differentiated through technological innovation, with strong revenue growth. In particular, OneVentures is looking for companies operating in the SaaS, fintech, marketplace and e-commerce spaces, who are led by exceptional founding teams and generating >$3-5m in revenue.

Venture credit is attractive to companies seeking a less dilutive financing option, or companies looking to incorporate venture credit within the funding mix of their capital raising round. It provides a longer capital runway, allowing companies more time to achieve important milestones before a subsequent round of financing. In the same way as our equity investments, the OneVentures team will continue to provide insight, network and strategic knowledge to the investee company.

The fund is seeking technology companies with a strong product market fit, investing $500k to $5m per company and making approximately 40 investments.

Learn more at www.one-ventures.com.au/funds.

About OneVentures Innovation & Growth Fund II

The OneVentures Innovation and Growth Fund II was launched in October 2014 with $75M in funds available for investment in technology and healthcare businesses.

Fund II is focused on later stage companies seeking growth and development capital including for offshore expansion. Fund II is currently seeking technology companies with a strong product market fit and a clear path to revenue of $3 to 5M over the next 12 months. In particular, we are looking at investment opportunities where the experience of the OneVentures management team can be leveraged to accelerate growth. The fund looks to invest on average $5M and up to $10M into any one company.

Learn more at www.one-ventures.com.au/funds.

About Phocas

Phocas is a privately owned and self-funded team of passionate professionals who are committed to helping people feel good about their data. Today we have grown to serve over 1,800 companies and roughly 25,000 people, who rely on our software to complement ERP functionality and manage business operations.

We serve both midmarket and enterprise customers, who appreciate our tailored, industry-focused solutions that simplify data management through powerful analytics and visualization tools, and revolutionize the way they interact with their own information.

We develop and support customer businesses with software that is simple, elegant and can serve departments and roles throughout the organization. Phocas changes the way people think and work, and makes it easier for them to be decisive and operate with confidence.

Co-founder and Co-CEO Myles lives on the beach in Sydney, while Phil lives on a farm near Orange in regional NSW.

Learn more at www.phocassoftware.com.