Blue Cove Ventures is a Venture Capital company committed to assisting talented entrepreneurs build successful technology companies. We are looking for visionaries with disruptive ideas, the commitment to build solutions and the passion to challenge the status quo. We want to be your first investor acting as your co-pilot on this journey. We believe our advice, guidance and mentoring is as valuable as the funding we provide. We want this journey to be fun and memorable and we strive for positive outcomes for all parties.
Background
Blue Cove Ventures was founded in 2007 and is based in Canberra, Australia. Blue Cove is backed by Hikari Asset Management a subsidiary of the Hikari Tsushin Group from Japan. The Hikari Tsushin Group manages venture capital funds that take stakes in Japanese and international companies with a focus on the Internet, IT and telecommunications sectors.
Executives
Nick McNaughton – CEO
Nick established Blue Cove ventures in 2007. Nick has a strong heritage in IT Investments and has a long track record of helping to build and grow software and web companies. Prior to founding Blue Cove Ventures he was co-founder of Quivalent Pty Ltd an email and blog marketing company behind www.zookoda.com and www.quivamail.com. In March 2007 Zookoda was sold to PayPerPost Inc. the leading marketplace for Consumer Generated Advertising.
From 2002-2004 he was Director – Asia/ Pacific for Wily Technology www.wilytech.com – Wily Technology provided performance monitoring and management solutions for enterprise java applications. Nick established their presence in the Pacific and helped them to identify, evaluate, mentor and manage their partners in Japan, Korea and Australia. Wily Technology was sold to CA (NYSE: CA) for US$375M in Jan 2006.
In 2001-2002 he was VP Strategy for Soulmates Technology. This company provided multi-lingual, multi-currency private-label ASP dating solution for MSN. Nick was instrumental in engineering a trade sale for Soulmates to Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ: IACI) the owner of Match.com for US$24M in April 2002.
From 1997-2001 he was Director – Asia / Pacific for Allaire (now owned by ADBE – NASDAQ: ADBE). He was responsible for establishing distribution for Allaire throughout the Pacific. During his tenure Allaire grew globally from US$9M in Revenue (1997) to over US$100M in 2001. In 1998 he participated in Allaire’s successful IPO on NASDAQ.
From 1993-1996 he was based in Hong Kong as Director – Asia for Claris Corporation (owned by Apple Computer and now called FileMaker, Inc.). Once again he was responsible for the establishment of Claris’ distributor and channel network in the region. Nick is also a successful angel investor and business mentor for a number of early stage ventures.
Nick has an Honours Degree in Computing in Business from The University Huddersfield in the UK.