Datasite, the leading software provider for the M&A industry, has announced its intention to acquire our portfolio company Sherpany. Verve has backed the Zurich-based software startup that has grown into the European leader in meeting management since its Seed round in 2013. This very successful exit shows again that investing in startups needs patience and the right approach to assess potential investments professionally.
Meetings can be highly productive or an utter waste of time. Sherpany’s software is used to prepare and post-process management and board meetings, making them paperless and more effective. Agenda items and documents needed are made available before the meeting, digitally. Topics everybody agrees on don’t need to be discussed in the actual meeting. This means that the time in the meeting will be spent discussing complex problems and potential solutions.
Sherpany was founded in 2011 by Tobias Häckermann and Matthias Brenner. Since then it has grown to over 100 employees with offices in Berlin, Lisbon, Milano, Paris, and Wrotzlaw. The company counts global blue-chip companies as its customers.
Lukas Weber, co-founder of Verve Ventures, met Tobias for the first time in 2011 for a coffee at 8 am at Confiserie Sprüngli in the heart of Zurich. A year later, as the financing round came up, Verve reached a positive investment decision after interviewing experts in the field and potential buyers. At the time, Sherpany was mainly focusing on a software tool for online voting in general assemblies of companies (although the boardroom tool was already in place as well).
“When Verve first invested in Sherpany, we were convinced by the good balance between the two founders. Tobias showed that he had the necessary grit to see things through and a strong sales mindset. Matthias is an incredibly smart engineer and someone – as a software engineer myself – I could see myself working for. He would go on to be always helpful, for example in exchanging best practices with the founders of other of our portfolio companies” says Lukas.
In Verve’s presentation towards its nascent investor network (this was one of Verve’s first investments), Sherpany’s strong team, the renowned members of its advisory board, and the scalability of its product as well as the large market were highlighted. One of the investors from the Verve network who was convinced to invest at that time says that he saw the need for the software solution from his activity as a board member in several companies.
Verve became not just an investor in the company but also a paying customer for the software. What is more important, Verve’s founding team and board helped Sherpany with a lot of introductions to potential clients out of which many converted. Already at this time, the benefit of Verve’s network for a portfolio company became visible.
After raising a Series A financing round in 2014, Sherpany pivoted and decided to concentrate fully on the board and management meeting organization tool. Strong founders know what to focus on, and aren’t afraid to change the direction of the company.
You can’t argue with success. Sherpany continued its growth thanks to the focus on making meetings more productive. “For companies, meetings are a major success factor, while for employees, they can be a major stressor”, resumes Nicole Herzog, Sherpany’s Chairwoman, in our interview.
In 2020, Sherpany raised an undisclosed amount in a Series B financing round, the first opportunity for early investors to sell their shares in a so-called secondary transaction. Many new investors joined this financing round through Verve. They invested in a company with a very different profile compared to its beginnings: a growth company with a good reputation and an impressive roster of large and well-known clients. For them, this largely de-risked opportunity was a successful exit as well.
Eugen Stamm joined Verve Ventures in 2018 and covers startups and investment topics. He has invested in more than 30 startups and joined the board of directors of a fintech startup. Eugen has more than a decade of experience in financial journalism (including working for Neue Zürcher Zeitung) and wrote a book about family governance.