The cloud software, cybersecurity, and fintech-focused buyout and growth equity firm uses a proprietary machine learning platform for deal sourcing and operational value-add.
Invictus Growth Partners (“Invictus” or the “Firm”) has closed its oversubscribed debut fund, Invictus Growth Fund I, L.P., with fund commitments totaling $322 million to its core fund and related co-investment funds. Invictus acquires and invests in bootstrapped and capital-efficient enterprise cloud software, cybersecurity, and fintech companies. The firm employs a proprietary machine learning platform, Deal Intelligence Assessment Neural Engine (“Diane”), to source investments and then improve their operations. Invictus is a majority minority-owned firm and was co-founded by John DeLoche and William Nettles, who have a 27-year history of working together, dating back to starting their careers at CS First Boston in 1995.
The funds include an oversubscribed Fund I at $216 million, which closed above the fundraising target of $200 million, as well as $106 million in related co-invested capital subscribed by the institutional limited partners (“LP”) as part of Invictus’ programmatic co-investment program. The institutional LP base includes state pension funds, corporate pension funds, insurance companies, funds of funds, and family offices.
“Our mission is to empower excellence in our portfolio companies and our people,”
said John DeLoche, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Invictus.
“We accomplish this based on our values of integrity, humility, teamwork, diversity, and relationships. We are grateful to our team, our LPs, and our portfolio companies for their partnership.”
“We bring a partnership approach and deep operating expertise to our portfolio companies to help them scale,”
said William Nettles, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Invictus.
“This includes our team’s expertise and machine learning-powered B2B operational enhancements through the Diane platform, as well as the expertise of the Invictus Guild.”
Invictus has completed seven platform investments in its focus areas of cloud software, cybersecurity, and fintech. The Firm targets companies with at least $10 million of annual recurring revenue that have been bootstrapped or have annual recurring revenue greater than equity capital raised. Invictus targets companies with strong product market fit that are profitable or nearly profitable at the time of investment. Five of Invictus' first seven investments were bootstrapped, with the balance having more recurring revenue than prior equity capital raised.
Five of the seven completed investments were sourced by Diane. Diane is a machine learning-powered outbound sales engine for B2B use cases. Invictus’ use case is to find outstanding lower middle market buyout and growth equity investment opportunities. Every Invictus portfolio company gains access to Diane, in addition to Invictus’ dedicated data science team, for their specific B2B use case to help create efficiencies in their operations and build systems for accelerated and sustainable growth.
Portfolio companies also benefit from access to the Invictus Guild. The Invictus Guild is composed of successful operating executives who have experience working at some of the most successful technology companies. Invictus Guild Members work across nine disciplines that are crucial for scaling technology companies, including sales, marketing, customer success, business development, corporate development, data science, human resources, product development, and finance. Invictus Guild members serve as mentors, operational advisors, and sources of best practices and talent for Invictus portfolio companies. They also invest personally in every portfolio company.
Moelis & Company LLC served as the exclusive placement agent.