Canadian Angel Boris Wertz Raises $15 Million To Launch Micro-VC Fund Version One Ventures

After years of investing his own money, Canadian angel Boris Wertz has raised $15 million and created a new fund that will enable him to make even larger investments in early-stage startups. The fund, which will be focused on consumer Internet, software-as-a-service, e-commerce, and mobile companies.

Wertz was the Chief Operating Officer of AbeBooks.com, which was acquired by Amazon.com back in 2008. He had been cofounder of German company JustBooks, which was later acquired by AbeBooks in 2002. Over the past several years, he’s been making investments in early-stage companies with his own money, and is also behind the GrowLab startup accelerator in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As an angel investor, Wertz had put money in more than 30 different startups with, including Chloe & Isabel, Edmodo, Flurry, GoInstant, Indiegogo, Indochino, Sparkbuy, Suite101, Wattpad, and Yapta. Altogether, he’s had six exits since he started investing, including sales to companies like Google, Twitter, Salesforce, and Groupon.

Now, after investing his own money for about four years, he’s ready to start investing with other people’s money. Wertz had previously made investments of about $50,000 to $75,000 each. With the new fund, he’ll be putting in anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 in seed and Series A funding rounds. Already, Version One has made five investments: Top Hat Monocle, Julep, Jobber, Instacanv.as, and Sunnytrail.

Version One has investment from former Yahoo president and COO Jeff Mallett, as well as more than a dozen American and Canadian Internet entrepreneurs and high-net worth individuals.

Crunchbase

• BORIS WERTZ

Person: Boris Wertz

Website: versiononeventures.com

Companies: Growlab Ventures , Version One Ventures, W Media Ventures, Techvibes Media, TeamPages, FitBrains, TripsByTips, Empire Avenue, Suite101, Indochino, Escapio, Weddingful, JustBooks, AbeBooks, Nexopia, Bootup Labs, JustBoughtIt, Bootup Entrepreneurial Society

Boris Wertz is the founder of version one ventures, an early-stage fund that has made over 35 investments in consumer internet, SaaS and mobile companies across North-America. Previously, Boris was the Chief Operating Officer of AbeBooks.com, the world’s largest marketplace for new, used and rare and out-of print books which got sold to Amazon in 2008. Boris joined the company in 2002 after JustBooks, the German company he co-founded in 1999, was acquired by AbeBooks. Boris successfully finished his...

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