Oquirrh Ventures (Salt Lake City) plans to begin fundraising for its third fund, Oquirrh Ventures III, starting in early 2025, with a target fund size of $400 million.
Salt Lake City-based Oquirrh Ventures plans to begin fundraising for Oquirrh Ventures III starting early 2025, with a target fund size of $400 million. With this fund Oquirrh plans to make, “around three to four investments a year” according to Founder and General Partner Ron Heinz, who sat down recently with TechBuzz. Heinz said Oquirrh also plans to have a “more concentrated position in companies” by making investments in the $20-40 million range.
Heinz explained Oquirrh Venture’s investment model: “We're investing in businesses which typically have an ARR of $10 million plus, have deep intellectual property that differentiates them in the market, and display the attributes to drive substantial growth.” He continued, “Our goal is to provide efficient capital structures and knowledge-based services to create exceptional outcomes for both the teams we back, as well as our investing partners."
Oquirrh Ventures Fund I was a Special Opportunities Fund supporting two businesses: Utah-based WILDWORKS and Lingotek. Both investments were profitable and were sold in 2022, providing strong returns for the Fund. This gave Heinz further confidence to start Oquirrh Ventures II, with Assets Under Management of approximately $200 million spread across the seven companies that comprise Oquirrh's current portfolio.
With the influence of past Oquirrh's investments, Oquirrh’s model favors undervalued businesses that present as opportunistic achievers. Oquirrh’s motivation is explained by Heinz:
“We're looking for assets that—for whatever reason–have experienced displacement around the investing syndicate or were too slow to take off but have the abilities to become great businesses. We're also looking for companies with exceptional Intellectual Property (IP) that tend to be in cyber security and networking infrastructure, but not exclusively.”
An example of Oquirrh’s investment model in action is their investment in Syxsense, Heinz explained:“Syxsense was doing a few million dollars a year in ARR yet given Fund dynamics, didn’t have enough available growth capital to support expansion goals. With the additional capital from Oquirrh, the company grew dramatically to a $16 million ARR run rate this year. In a compelling market combination, Syxsense was recently acquired by Absolute Security, a rapidly growing cybersecurity company.”
Oquirrh has primarily invested in Utah-based enterprise SaaS businesses, and prefers companies in the Cybersecurity and Networking Infrastructure sectors. However, Oquirrh's investing thesis isn’t limited to just Utah. With a Utah presense, Syxsense was a California-based company, and one of Oquirrh's more prominent current investments—Seclore—was originally based in Mumbai, India before Oquirrh re-domiciled it to California.
Oquirrh’s team comprises of Founder Ron Heinz, Co-founder and Partner Jevan Sadler, Venture Partner David Rudd, Investment Partners Jeff Young and Julie Klaff, and a team of analysts who assist in searching for new investments. According to Heinz, Oquirrh is “throughtfully scanning the market” for new investments, working with other Utah-based ventures, as well as partners from around the world. Heinz explained, “Salt Lake-based relationships are very important to us and we have good friends at Pelion Ventures, Signal Peak Ventures, Kickstart, and Epic Ventures."
The pending Oquirrh Ventures III fund will represent the largest investing that Oquirrh has handled. With this in mind, Heinz plans to “expand the team as we grow” to meet the demands of Oquirrh's exciting future.
More information can be found at Oquirrh Ventures’ website.