Welcome to Ringier Digital Ventures and David Hug who will be seeking interesting digital startups for possible Series A investments.
This is a good news for the Swiss ICT venture ecosystem who has been struggling to access Series A financing.
Ringier is a well known media company with numerous print and online titles (Blick, Scout, DeinDeal, Ticketcorner, overview of their portfolio here).
With a corporate venture fund of CHF 30M, Ringier Digital Ventures aims for 5 to 8 Series A transactions per year in digital startups (with a content component on Switzerland or with novel adtech or media related technology).
Remains to be seen the exact portion of cash and media for equity in the proposed investment rounds. Pure play media for equity rounds are notoriously more complicated as entrepreneurs basically exchange tangible equity against the hopeful results of a media campaign across various print and online properties. I believe it is a good thing that Ringier Digital Ventures can offer a combination of both cash and media, and also offer investment syndication with other equity investors and business angels (a collaboration with http://www.b-to-v.com is also mentioned).
Enclosed here the fact sheet posted by @RD_Ventures on Twitter
I can see several attractive startups in Romandie who should explore this and look forward to receiving feedbacks.
Andromede Ventures 