Rockaway Capital, a VC firm focused on investing and building Internet companies in emerging markets, has entered the US market with the opening of its first office in San Francisco's SOMA district.
The firm has invested USD28 million in seed stage, high growth, transformational start-ups across e-commerce, B2B SaaS, Fintech, and travel/transportation and has additional access to USD225 million in funding. Initial offices were in Prague and Sao Paolo.
Rockaway Capital has already brought over its first group of globally viable entrepreneurs and start-ups to introduce them to the US venture community and bring their products to market here. Rockaway works closely with syndicates and LPs to create co-investment partnerships as a portfolio company establishes operations, sales, and management teams in the US To date, Rockaway has experienced tremendous success in the European region with a repeatable track record of investing and building more than 30 companies, founding 7 companies and bringing offline brands online. Currently, Rockaway companies have employed more than 550 people.
"There is a vacuum in the European region with few VCs and a talented pool of engineers and startups. Through our broad industry experience as entrepreneurs and deep pool of resources and capital, we are building the Internet economy in emerging markets and helping to grow these promising companies in the US," said Jakub Havrlant, CEO of Rockaway Capital.
The Rockaway Capital team is comprised of 27 US and European entrepreneurs. Leadership includes:
• Jakub Havrlant, Chief Executive Officer
• Jan Jirovec, Investment Partner
• Dusan Zabrodsky, Investment Partner
• Sean Gaddis, Head of Value Creation
The company has plans to raise additional funding by 2016.
