As you may already have heard,
we have recently established a private equity and venture
capital partnership, Treacle Venture Partners. We are very
excited about our new enterprise and we would like to tell you
a bit more about it.
All three of us have
considerable experience in the area of venture capital within
a corporate environment - Rudolf at Rand Merchant Bank,
Christoff at Gensec and Konrad at Archway - where we were
responsible for investing in and establishing new ventures. We
learnt a great deal at these august financial institutions but
each of us has a dream. We fervently believe that private
equity and venture capital funds are best managed by
entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurial environment and this is
what we aim to accomplish.
We have put our own money where
our hearts lie and formed a partnership where the venture
capitalists in the business are themselves at risk, where they
make the decisions themselves and really "partner"
the entrepreneurs.
Treacle Venture Partners
provides equity capital, strategic marketing input, general
business guidance and financial and structuring advice to
inventors of new technologies, entrepreneurs needing capital
to establish a new business, entrepreneurs and management
teams needing capital to grow emerging businesses in the
information technology, media and telecommunications
industries. Treacle will be a venture partnership focusing on
innovation.
We are delighted that a number
of major investors - Nedcor, Nedcor Investment Bank, Primedia,
Decillion and Hannover Re - are championing our vision and,
along with management, are investing in the first fund we have
established.
You may be intrigued by the
origins of our name. As you know "treacle" is a
sweet sticky syrup derived from cane and as venture
capitalists we will only support those rare entrepreneurs who
understand the sweet spots of their industries better than
their competitors.
We'd be delighted to tell you
more about our business and hope that you will call us and pop
in for a cup of tea or a drink after work. Here we make the
tea as well as the big decisions. We look forward to hearing
from you.
Kind regards,
Rudolf Pretorius
Christoff Botha
Konrad Fleischhauer
