Danny Rimer

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(born 1970) is a partner at

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a Europe, European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Sinc ...

, a global

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm founded in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

in 1992. Rimer opened the firm's

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

office in 2002 and its

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

office in 2012. He has become a leading voice on

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

, and has been actively involved in various philanthropic and cultural activities.

Early life

Rimer was born in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

, but grew up in

, Switzerland. After graduating from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to inclu ...

, he moved to the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

Career

While in the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

, Rimer and some friends began a company to

digitize DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer- ...

images of famous artwork and sell the downloads, forging exclusive deals with galleries such as the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

and the

Uffizi Gallery The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian mus ...

to commercialize the images. In 1994, Rimer joined

Hambrecht & Quist Hambrecht & Quist (H&Q) was an investment bank based in San Francisco, California noted for its focus on the technology and Internet sectors. H&Q was founded by Bill Hambrecht and George Quist in California, in 1968. H&Q was an early player in ...

(now owned by

JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the w ...

), where he began an Internet sector

equity research Securities research is a discipline within the financial services industry. Securities research professionals are known most generally as "analysts", "research analysts", or "securities analysts"; all the foregoing terms are synonymous. Researc ...

group. He was

managing director A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

and

underwriting Underwriting (UW) services are provided by some large financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies and investment houses, whereby they guarantee payment in case of damage or financial loss and accept the financial risk for liabili ...

analyst for

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...

and

Verisign Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the , , and gene ...

. and helped to take Netscape

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

. Rimer became a general partner of The Barksdale Group in 1999, where he invested in a dozen companies including Crossgain (acquired by

BEA Systems BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008. History BEA began as a software company, founded in 1995 and headquartered in ...

Ofoto The Kodak Gallery was Kodak's consumer online digital photography web site. It featured online photo storage, sharing, viewing on a mobile phone, getting Kodak prints of digital pictures, and creating personalized photo gifts. The service was or ...

(acquired by

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

) and Tellme Networks (acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

), before joining Index in 2002 to establish the London office. He later co-founded the San Francisco office in 2012 with Index partner

Mike Volpi Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi (born 13 December 1966) is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He worked as an engineer, eventually becoming chief strategy officer at Cisco Systems during the company’s growth era, acquiring ove ...

. In his early years at Index, Rimer made a series of notable investments in infrastructure and services companies such as

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, ...

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

and Last.fm (acquired by CBS for $280 million). More recently he led the firm’s investments in

1stdibs 1stdibs (stylized as 1stDibs) is an e-commerce company. It has an online marketplace, which sells luxury items such as high-end furniture for interior design, fine art and jewelry. The company has been recognized for "pushing the antiques business ...

Anki Anki may refer to: * Anki (software), spaced repetition software * Anki (company), a now-defunct American robotics and artificial intelligence startup * Anki (Finnish company), a manufacturer of rugs * Anxi County () is a county of the prefec ...

, Boku,

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2 ...

() (in which he led a series B round investment of $250 million in 2011),

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft ...

(),

Farfetch Farfetch is a British-Portuguese online luxury fashion retail platform that sells products from over 700 boutiques and brands from around the world. The company was founded in 2007 by the Portuguese entrepreneur José Neves with its headquarter ...

(), Figma,

Flipboard Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Bejiing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates conte ...

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the ...

(acquired by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

in 2016 for $5.9 billion), Zesty, and Beauty Pie, among others. Rimer was previously a director at KVS (acquired by

Veritas Veritas is the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main virtues any good Roman should possess. The Greek goddess of truth is Aletheia (Ancient Greek: ). The German philosopher Martin Heidegger argues ...

in 2004 for $225 million); Last.fm,

Lovefilm LoveFilm was a United Kingdom–based provider of DVD-by-mail and streaming video on demand in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany. Acquired by Amazon.com in 2011, the service had reached 2 million subscribers. It claimed ...

(known as "The

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

of Europe," acquired by

in 2011 for $317 million);

(acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

in 2008 for $1 billion and now part of

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The wor ...

); Neoteris (acquired by

NetScreen NetScreen Technologies was an American technology company that was acquired by Juniper Networks for US$4 billion stock for stock in 2004. NetScreen Technologies developed ASIC-based Internet security systems and appliances that delivered high p ...

in 2003 for $245 and now part of

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...

);

Sky PLC Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's l ...

();

(acquired by

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

in 2005 for $2.6 billion and then by

in 2011 for $8.5 billion); and

TrialPay TrialPay was an alternative e-commerce payment system in which a consumer gets an item for free from a participating merchant in exchange for buying or trying out another product or service from a TrialPay advertiser. The merchant is then paid fo ...

(acquired by

Visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

in February 2017.

Awards and honors

Rimer's various awards and honors include: * The ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameter ...

of top global VCs, to which he has been named 11 times *The Forbes Midas List of European VCs, to which he has been nominated in 2019 * '' Fortune'' magazine's

40 under 40 ''Fortune'' magazine's 40 Under 40 is a list of individuals the publication considers to be the most influential young leaders for the year. The list has existed in two phases: First, from 1999 to 2003, the list was presented purely as a numeric ...

list of business’s rising young stars. * '' The New York Times''' and CB Insights' list of the Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, each year since the list's inception (2016 through 2018) *

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) for service to business and charity. He is a fixture at the

Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference The Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference is an annual media finance conference hosted and funded by private investment firm Allen & Company. The conference has taken place in Sun Valley, Idaho for one week each July since 1983. The gathering ...

, an annual gathering of business leaders, political figures, and major figures in the philanthropic and cultural spheres.

Philanthropy and non-profit involvement

Rimer serves on the board of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, a network of drop-in healthcare centers across the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, with the aim of helping cancer patients. He was formerly on the board of trustees at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ( SFMOMA).

References

External links

Index Ventures website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rimer, Danny Living people Canadian venture capitalists 1970 births Businesspeople from London Harvard University alumni Officers of the Order of the British Empire

Early life

Career

Awards and honors

Philanthropy and non-profit involvement

References

Further reading

External links