Drawing upon the global media reach of parent company Bertelsmann, BDMI is a financially-driven corporate venture investor that brings a wealth of experience and opportunities to emerging companies. Their goal is to partner with companies that can benefit from their media expertise and global perspective. They invest in companies based in North America, Europe, and Israel.

Experience

Bertelsmann is a media, services and education company that operates in about 50 countries around the world. The company has more than 112,000 employees and generated revenues of €16.7 billion in financial year 2014. Bertelsmann stands for creativity and entrepreneurship. This combination promotes the creation of first-class media content and innovative service solutions that inspire customers around the world.

How much do they invest?

BDMI invests out of two funds: a seed fund and a traditional early stage fund. In BDMI’s main fund, they typically pursue Series A and Series B rounds with an initial investment of $1m to $5m plus reserves for follow-ons. BDMI provides not only capital, but also brings access to a worldwide collection of diverse businesses within Bertelsmann and via their broader network of media industry connections.

How do they work?

They are comfortable leading an investment, co-leading or joining a syndicate with other strategic or financial investors. Depending upon the size of their investment, they usually hold voting board seats or observer seats.

This makes a difference to them

For the seed fund, BDMI typically prefers to see a product or service that is live in the marketplace with some initial data points that demonstrate early signs of product-market fit. They don’t usually lead seed stage investments but prefer to join a syndicate with a lead already in place.

Key People

Urs Cete - Managing Partner
Urs is the Managing Partner of BDMI. He is also a founding member who joined BDMI as Chief Financial Officer in 2006 from the Corporate Controlling and Strategy group at Bertelsmann where he was “chief of staff” to the CEO ad worked on strategic projects for all of the media company’s divisions including TV, radio, music, books, magazines, and services.
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Sim Blaustein - Partner
Sim Joined BDMI in 2012 from High Line Venture Partners, where he co-founded the seed fund and has been in venture capital since 2002 including 3 years at Gabriel Ventures where he managed 17 investments including 3 IPOs and 3 M&As.
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Keith Titan - Partner
Keith joined BDMI in 2006 from Random House ventures where he managed investments in American Reading Company and Xlibris (acquired by AuthorHouse). He is actively focused on innovative, early-stage companies that have unique digital media technologies, products or distribution channels in the direct-to-consumer or business-to-business markets.
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