Portfolio update (part 1)

As 2010 is drawing to a close I’d like to take a moment to give you a quick update on my angel investment activities and more importantly, thank the incredibly talented and hard-working people who have made it such an amazing year.

Since becoming a full-time angel investor in 2008 I’ve made 14 seed investments, with 4-5 additional ones being on the way. Except for two of my first investments that didn’t work out – rookie mistakes, fortunately pretty small ones – I’m absolutely blown away by the success of each and every company in my portfolio.

Some highlights:

Zendesk has had a phenomenal year. In May we announced that we’ve reached 5,000 paying customers. We didn’t publish an updated number since then but I think it’s no secret that the number of Zendesk lovers worldwide has continued to explode throughout the year. With a world-class management team and Board, one of the best products and brands in B2B software and a recent $19M cash infusion Zendesk is ideally poised to bring Cloud-based zen and good karma to even more people in 2011. Mange tak to Mikkel, Morten, Alex, Michael and the whole crew.

Speaking of the Cloud, 2010 may mark a tipping point with respect to the adoption of Cloud-based services in the legal technology field: In 2010 my portfolio company Clio, which provides a web-based practice management solution for solo lawyers and small law firms, has grown its customer base by more than 400%. The company also continues to launch new features and initiatives pretty much on a weekly basis, boasts (by far) the highest trial-to-subscription conversion rate that I’ve ever seen and has a ton of great new stuff in the pipeline. Thanks and merci to you, Jack and Rian, and your growing team of hand-picked rock-star developers and industry experts.

The development of Momox, which has bought more than 8.4 million used books, CDs, DVDs and games from private sellers since 2006, has been equally impressive. We’ve grown revenue by more than 2.5x , recruited two stellar executives to head logistics and marketing, moved to a new 85,000 square foot warehouse, relaunched our online shop, raised a couple of million Euros from Acton Capital Partners and scaled up the whole organization to make sure that we can handle our continued growth. Huge kudos to Christian Wegner and his 150+ people in Berlin for this gigantic and successful effort – jut jemacht!

More in part 2.