Neil Rimer
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Neil Rimer | |
|---|---|
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| Born | October 7, 1963 |
| Alma mater | Stanford University Harvard Business School |
| Occupations | Venture capitalist and investor, founder and partner at Index Ventures |
Neil Rimer is a Swiss-Canadian venture capitalist who is the founding partner at Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in Europe, the United States, and Israel.[1][2][3] He is also the co-chair of the board of directors at Human Rights Watch.[4]
Rimer was born in Montreal, Quebec, and reared and educated (International School of Geneva) in Geneva, Switzerland. He received a bachelor's degree in History and Economics from Stanford University, and was a General Course student at the London School of Economics.
He then took his first job out of school with Montgomery Securities, an investment bank in San Francisco. He then completed a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, and upon graduating, chose to return to Europe.[5]
He was later quoted by Fortune as reflecting on this move, "I was excited about the idea of participating in the birth of the VC industry in Europe".[6]
Career
Soon after his return to Geneva, in 1991, Rimer helped his father Gerald exit the bond trading business he had founded, and spent a few years connecting institutional investors with European technology startups, an effort that over time evolved into the official launch of Index Ventures.[6] In 1996 Rimer co-founded Index Ventures in Geneva with his brother, David, and Giuseppe Zocco,[7] helping raise Index' first pilot fund of $17 million, followed by a $180 million fund in 1998.[6] Companies funded during this time include SCM Microsystems (now Identiv)[6] and Virata, a chipmaker, which later entered into a $1.3 Billion merger with GlobeSpan.[8] Index started investing in Israeli companies in 2003.[9] As of 2007, Rimer claimed to The Wall Street Journal that "the bulk of our portfolio is in Europe and Israel."[10]
Notable investments by Rimer's company include Betfair (LSE: BET) and Skype (acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion,[11][12] later acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion).[13] Index Ventures has invested in 21 Israeli companies, including MyHeritage, Outbrain, Lacoon, Adallom, Wiz, Capitolis, and Gong.io.[14]
Rimer has also invested in and served on the boards of directors of Last.fm (acquired by CBS for $280 million),[15] Ofoto (acquired by Kodak),[16] Trolltech (acquired by Nokia for $153 million),[17] Numerical Technologies (acquired by Synopsis for $250 million);[18] Genmab (Nasdaq Copenhagen: GEN);[7] and StepStone.[7] Rimer currently sits on the board of directors of a number of companies including Call9, Funding Circle, HouseTrip, MOO Print, PhotoBox, StackExchange,[7] Supercell,[19] Kaggle,[20] Metromile,[21] and The Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto for approximately $1.1 billion).[22]
Rimer headed the team at Index Ventures that led a $130 million funding round in Supercell, the subject of a May 6, 2013 Forbes article, "Is This the Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?"[19] In October 2013 Softbank and GungHo Online Entertainment acquired 51% of Supercell for $1.53 billion.[23]
In November 2017 Rimer was concerned that, although Europe was on a path to significance, it could miss the opportunities to build huge companies such as Amazon, Facebook or Google, if it could not attract the required talent.[24] In April 2020, Neil Rimer became a member of the Taxfix board.[25]
Awards
In 2017, Rimer was named the number one venture capitalist in Europe in Forbes' inaugural Midas List Europe.[26] He was also featured on the Forbes Global Midas list in 2018[27] and the 2018 New York Times list of the top venture capitalists worldwide.[28]
