2022年10月4日,

伙伴的山脊线是一个新的风投公司投资于B2B公司与一个特定的目标:帮助其投资组合内的公司卖给复杂的组织很难破解,但如果你进入他们可以是伟大的客户。孟菲斯市公司成立于2020年,本·沃克瑞安克林顿和安德鲁·麦克马洪——三个人知道一个复杂的实体,需要更好的技术解决方案的时间在政府组织工作。沃克和克林顿一起见过西点军校被部署到伊拉克,而麦克马洪的背景包括时间小企业管理局,它支持企业家和小企业。山脊线不只是集中在公司可以卖给政府,最近已成为一个受欢迎的策略,但也认为,他们的经验在这一进程可能会被证明是有用的对于他们的一些组合。相反,它是想回公司,可以帮助任何复杂的遗留的实体,从联邦政府到联邦快递。“企业界同样的技术问题,联邦政府,”沃克对TechCrunch说。“我们正试图推动组合成复杂的组织真的不管他们是否在联邦空间或者是商业空间。我认为双焦点是独特的山脊。“山脊筹集了5200万美元的超额认购上市基金支持企业科技公司在种子和系列阶段。公司旨在以5%到10%的所有权的公司和计划写检查的500万美元,麦克马洪说。 The firm is about halfway through deploying its capital and looks to invest in up to 10 more companies. Despite being oversubscribed, the fund was impacted by the market uncertainty earlier this year and had a few investors pull out at the end, Walker said. But, the LPs the firm ended up with, including large consumer conglomerates like FedEx, Dollar General and AutoZone, prompted the firm to move to Memphis. “The opportunity to partner with them is to bolster their innovation efforts in a lot of ways,” Clinton said. “We took it one step further to establish a headquarters here to take full advantage of these relationships and drive value for our portfolio companies.” Walker added that the fact that many of the firm’s LPs are based in middle American means they are largely overlooked by both coastal VCs and companies as potential customers for new technology, despite having many of the same problems other legacy corporations have. “[Working near these companies] ends up being a massive differentiator to source and win deals,” Walker said. “It was one of the main reasons we moved to Memphis. You can’t fake that. You can’t have that as a narrative and not be in Memphis and make that happen. It’s still difficult to get an enterprise deal done anywhere.” Ridgeline is targeting companies in sectors like manufacturing, supply chain logistics, retail tech and data analytics, among others. The firm has made 18 investments thus far, which include geospatial intelligence company PlanetWatchers and machine learning startup Neural Magic. And while Ridgeline hopes to help some of its portfolio companies land contracts with the federal government, McMahon said they aren’t looking to push their companies in that direction. It is a lengthy process that isn’t for all startups, and timing of when to pitch is key. “It’s always a responsible approach to that market,” he said. “It’s so big, it can have its own gravitational pull. They can very quickly become largely defense from a revenue standpoint. We would much rather have companies have a large commercial and enterprise revenue stream and a similar proportion of that be revenue from the government.” While it hopes it can help its startups succeed, the firm founders also hope their efforts have a ripple effect on the companies and the people of the city of Memphis. “It allows us to look for companies sprouting out of the South and this industrial belt that is often overlooked in VC,” Walker said. “It’s going to allow us to see things before they pop up in the general radar. It’s something we feel like Memphis has provided and it’s allowed our portfolio to punch above its weight.”