By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

International early stage venture capital firm Mindset Ventures announced a first close at $35 million for its $50 million Fund III.

Concurrently, the firm announced that Jules Miller, a B2B entrepreneur, investor, corporate executive, and Kauffman Fellow, has joined the firm as its new partner and head of U.S. operations. 

Since its founding in 2016 by Daniel Ibri and Camila Folkmann, Mindset has focused its capital deployment across the U.S. and Israel. Although the fund is sector agnostic, Mindset typically  targets strong technological B2B startups in the agriculture, financial services, healthcare, education, and cybersecurity sectors that are aiming to scale their business internationally – especially into Latin America.

With 40 investments under its belt to-date, Mindset has been key in helping more than 25 percent of its portfolio expand geographically to Latin America – particularly to Brazil, where the firm’s local team and extensive network of potential clients and distributors has supported its startups gain traction in a global and dynamic market.

Several successes have been born of Mindset’s first two funds, including B2B financial services platform Brex, which is currently valued at $2.6 billion, and Voicea, which has been acquired by CISCO. Mindset also is an investor in Israel-based SeeTree, an AI-driven startup with offices in California and Brazil that offers end-to-end services to farmers of permanent tree crops that enable them to manage and optimize both their stock health and output, and Taranis, another Israel-based startup that uses patented aerial imagery technology that when affixed to high-speed UAVs and manned aircraft provides more than 500 times the detail compared to existing monitoring platforms.

“The quick first closing of the new fund reassures Mindset’s position as one of the leading cross-border VCs in Israel and the U.S., not only from its financial results and portfolio, but also by the active support it provides to founders,” said Daniel Ibri, co-founder and managing partner, Mindset Ventures.

With a first closing backed by several LPs, including family offices, high net worth individuals, and corporate investors, Fund III has already made two investments and plans on making at least 15 more over the course of the next three years. 

As its mandate grows and portfolio continues to expand and diversify, Mindset has also steadily grown its leadership team. Earlier this year Nemer Rahal, an experienced executive and former partner at Patria Investimentos, an affiliate of Blackstone and a leading private equity name in Brazil, joined the firm as managing partner.

Most recently, Jules Miller joined the team from IBM where she co-founded and led IBM Blockchain Ventures and the IBM Blockchain Accelerator. 

“I am thrilled and honored to announce that I am joining the incredible team at Mindset Ventures as their US Partner to invest in exceptional early stage enterprise tech companies in the US and Israel,” said Miller. “The name couldn’t be more perfect. Especially now, our Mindset matters.”

 

– Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.