Knife Capital

Knife Capital
Private
Industry Venture Capital
Founded 2010
Founder Andrea Böhmert
Eben van Heerden
Keet van Zyl
Headquarters Cape Town, South Africa
Key people
 Andrea Böhmert (Partner)
Eben van Heerden (Partner)
Keet van Zyl (Partner)
Website www.knifecap.com

Knife Capital is a Southern African venture capital investor. The firm was founded in 2010 out of what was HBD Ventures and in addition to its core fund management activities, Knife Capital provides consulting, training and business acceleration services to high-growth ventures in Southern Africa. Knife Capital is also involved in the Silicon Cape Initiative. [1]


Knife Capital has been named as the top venture capital firm in Southern African for three years running by Acquisition International [2] magazine as well as the 'Southern African Growth Specialists of the Year' for the first time in 2016. [3]

The Firm

The Knife Capital team is deeply involved in skills, technology and knowledge transfer initiatives to foster entrepreneurial activity in the Southern African region. In 2013 the firm launched the Grindstone Accelerator, an initiative focused on enabling high-growth technology enabled companies to become sustainable and fundable. The firm also provides a periodic Executive Education Program in partnership with UCT Graduate School of Business, to equip investors and entrepreneurs with a deep understanding of the high-growth investment process.

KnifeCap manages HBD Venture Capital's South African portfolio of investments. HBD VC is a South African Venture Capital Fund founded by Mark Shuttleworth in 2000. HBD (an acronym for "Here Be Dragons" - a term used in ancient times to mark unchartered territories on maps) offers growth capital to a range of early stage businesses.

In November 2013, an announcement was released stating that Knife Capital was entering into negotiations to be acquired by African Dawn Capital Limited, a Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed company with the Knife directors retaining control in a reverse takeover.

KNF Ventures

In early 2016 Knife Capital launched its latest fund called KNF Ventures. This fund aims to target earlier stage investments than previous funds. KNF stands for the three areas which Knife aims to fuel growth - through the application of Knowledge, Networks and Funding. [4]

Grindstone Accelerator

The Grindstone accelerator is a growth and funding platform by Knife Capital to assist post-revenue high-growth technology enabled SMEs to accelerate strategy execution.[5] It is a year long program that has been rankied as the top accelerator program in Africa both in terms of average revenue growth and raising investment.

YueDiligence

In 2015 Knife Capital launched YueDiligence, an interactive web-based tool that aims to increases due diligence efficiency for entrepreneurs, investors and service providers through process automation.[6]

See also

References

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