Serial entrepreneurs and investor Chris Farmer launched SignalFire, an early stage venture capital firm.
The San Francisco-based firm, which has raised approximately $53m, leads or co-leads rounds typically as the first institutional investors in a company. According to a post on Medium, Farmer said that they invest “wherever data and technology are disrupting old markets, which turns out to be a broad swath of sectors spanning consumer (mobile, media, marketplaces, gaming, e-commerce, social networking, etc.) and enterprise (SaaS, Big data, machine learning, verticalized software, security, etc.).”
He also explained their approach as a venture capital firm that:
Connects its founders with top technologists and executives in any field
Designs products and services to help our companies grow and recruit
Deeply understands (and actually uses) bleeding-edge technology
Enables each entrepreneur’s vision with access to an unmatched, constantly growing network.
According to two regulatory filings with the SEC, SignalFire raised $49.5m from 27 investors and $3.105m from 23 investors.
In order to support backed startups, the firm leverages a platform, called Beacon, that aims to hit the pain point of hiring top talent. By tracking the entire talent ecosystem of the tech industry, ranking each person with dozens of quality dimensions and real-time hireability predictions, the software helps find candidates each company needs, pushing new ones to the portfolio companies as they become available.
FinSMEs
16/10/2015