TIMAR Ventures is about facilitating global change. Our thesis is based on the power of technology and we want to be involved in creation of new ethics, social economic value and a new "civilization" through the chnges.
We invest in technology companies, primarily in Turkey, in Jordan and in emerging markets as well s globally.
We want to invest in companies which have the following characteristics:
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Potential to change the structure of the markets: To give examples, in information technology Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Google and Facebook have all, in some way, restructured their markets. We believe that despite the success of these web services, the market is still in its infancy, and that liquidity of information on the net is shortening market cycles making it likely that the next generation of web services will have an equally disruptive impact on this still very young market structure. Mobility and social networks make the distribution easier and find help with user acquisition strategies. A similar opportunity in the mobile sectors, services utilizing social graph such as finance, health, commerce and travel are important. Innovation moves up the ladder and resides in the software and services.
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Technology Leverage: We want to invest in companies which have business models that can scale cost effectively using technology leverage.
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Defensibility: The portfolio companies need to have valuable technology that can be defended and form a “barriers to entry”. In addition to intellectual property, portfolio companies need to have the ability to quickly build other barriers to entry, such as exclusive business relationships, strategic partnerships and the ability to scale and capture their markets rapidly or through other means.
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Scalability: The portfolio companies need to be able to quickly and economically scale up and be able to offer multiple products based on their technology platform and assets.
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Profitability: Portfolio companies must have business models that show a clear path to profitability as a stand-alone entity.
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Social Economic Value: Some of the portfolio companies need to deliver social economic value, meaning ability to deliver value beyond IPO. The services need to serve consumers in real problems and create “opportunities”, “easiness”, “usefulness” in real life.
In addition to the above criteria, we look for the following criteria in potential portfolio companies to maximize the potential for success:
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A strong core team with domain expertise and the ability to supplement an existing
technical team by recruiting new talent,
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Ability to find the "efficient business model" in paradigm changing areas and the ability to do that with reasonable capital requirements,
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Ability to acquire a meaningful ownership interest at a reasonable valuation,
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Management buy in and incentives to realize shareholder value,
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Ability for us to add value and to exercise influence, regardless
of the size of our ownership interest.