The enterprise capital world has at all times had a hot-and-cold relationship with the Midwest. Buyers rush in throughout increase occasions, then retreat to the coasts when markets flip bitter. For Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital, this cycle of consideration and disinterest performed out in opposition to the backdrop of its personal inner upheaval a number of years in the past — a co-founder cut up that would have ended the agency however might have in the end strengthened it.
At a minimal, Drive achieved one thing newsworthy in at the moment’s enterprise panorama this previous Might. The agency returned $500 million to buyers in a single week, distributing practically $140 million price of Root Insurance coverage shares inside days of cashing out of Austin-based Considerate Automation and one other undisclosed firm.
It might be seen as a gimmick, positive, however restricted companions had been undoubtedly happy. “I’m unaware of some other enterprise agency having been in a position to obtain that type of liquidity lately,” stated Chris Olsen, Drive’s co-founder and now sole managing associate, who spoke to TechCrunch from the agency’s workplaces in Columbus’s Brief North neighborhood.
It’s a exceptional turnaround for a agency that confronted existential questions simply three years in the past when Olsen and his co-founder Mark Kvamme — each former Sequoia Capital companions — went their separate methods. The cut up, which stunned the agency’s buyers, noticed Kvamme finally launch the Ohio Fund, a broader funding car targeted on the state’s financial growth that features actual property, infrastructure, and manufacturing alongside know-how investments.
Drive’s current success stems from what Olsen calls a intentionally contrarian technique in an business preoccupied with “unicorns” and “decacorns” — firms valued at $1 billion and $10 billion, respectively.
“For those who had been to only learn the newspapers or take heed to espresso retailers on Sand Hill Highway, everybody at all times talks concerning the $50 billion or $100 billion outcomes,” Olsen stated. “However the actuality is, whereas these outcomes do occur, they’re actually uncommon. Within the final 20 years, there have solely been 12 outcomes in America over $50 billion.”
Against this, he famous, there have been 127 IPOs at $3 billion or extra, plus a whole bunch of M&A occasions at that degree. “For those who’re in a position to exit firms at $3 billion, then you definately’re in a position to do one thing that occurs each single month,” he stated.
That rationale underpinned the Considerate Automation exit, which Olsen described as “close to fund-returning” regardless of being “under a billion {dollars}.” The AI healthcare automation firm was offered to non-public fairness agency New Mountain Capital, which mixed it with two different firms to kind Smarter Applied sciences. Drive owned “multiples” of the standard Silicon Valley possession stake within the firm, stated Olsen, who added that Drive’s typical possession stake is round 30% on common in comparison with a Valley agency’s 10% — actually because it’s the sole enterprise investor throughout quite a few funding rounds.
“We had been the one enterprise agency who invested in that firm,” Olsen stated of Considerate Automation, which was beforehand backed by New Mountain, the PE agency. “About 20% of the businesses in our portfolio at the moment, we’re the only enterprise agency in these companies.”
Portfolio Wins and Losses
Drive’s monitor file consists of each massive successes and likewise stumbles. The agency was an early investor in Duolingo, backing the language-learning platform when it was pre-revenue after Olsen and Kvamme met founder Luis von Ahn at a bar in Pittsburgh, the place Duolingo relies. As we speak, Duolingo trades on NASDAQ with a market cap of practically $18 billion.
The agency additionally invested in Huge Information, an information storage platform final valued at $9 billion in late 2023 (and is reportedly fundraising proper now), and Drive made cash on the current Root Insurance coverage distribution regardless of that firm’s rocky public market efficiency since its late 2020 IPO.
However Drive additionally skilled the spectacular failure of Olive AI, a Columbus-based healthcare automation startup that raised over $900 million and was valued at $4 billion earlier than finally promoting parts of its enterprise in a fireplace sale.
“You have got to have the ability to produce returns in dangerous markets in addition to good markets,” Olsen stated. “When markets actually get examined is when there’s not as a lot liquidity.”
What units Drive aside, Olsen argues, is its give attention to firms constructing outdoors Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive ecosystem. The agency now has staff in six cities — Columbus, Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Atlanta, and Toronto — and says it backs founders who would in any other case face a selection between constructing close to their clients or their buyers.
It’s Drive’s secret sauce, he suggests. “Early-stage firms which might be primarily based outdoors of Silicon Valley have a better bar. They must be a greater enterprise to garner a enterprise funding from a enterprise agency in Silicon Valley,” Olsen stated. “The identical factor applies to us with firms in Silicon Valley. For us to put money into an organization in Silicon Valley, it has a better bar.”
A lot of the agency’s portfolio facilities not on firms attempting to give you one thing fully novel, however as a substitute on these making use of tech to conventional industries that coastal VCs may overlook. Drive has invested in an autonomous welding firm, for instance, and what Olsen calls “next-generation dental insurance coverage” — sectors that arguably signify America’s $18 trillion financial system past Silicon Valley’s tech darlings.
Whether or not that focus — or Drive’s momentum — interprets into an enormous new fund for Drive stays to be seen. The agency is at the moment managing property that it raised when Kvamme was nonetheless on board, and based on Olsen, it has 30% left to speculate of its present fund, a $1 billion car introduced in June 2022.
Requested about cash-on-cash returns to this point, Olsen stated that with $2.2 billion in property below administration throughout all of Drive’s funds, all are “prime quartile funds” with “north of 4x internet on our most mature funds” and “persevering with to develop from there.”
Within the meantime, Drive’s thesis about Columbus as a authentic tech hub obtained additional validation this week when Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel, and different tech billionaires introduced plans to launch Erebor, a crypto-focused financial institution headquartered in Columbus.
“Once we began Drive in 2012, individuals thought we had been nuts,” Olsen stated. “Now you’re seeing actually the individuals I consider as being the neatest minds in know-how — whether or not it’s Elon Musk or Larry Ellison or Peter Thiel — transferring out of Silicon Valley and opening large presences in several cities.”
