Drawing upon the global reach of parent company Bertelsmann, BDMI is a financially-driven corporate venture investor that brings a wealth of experience and opportunities to emerging companies. BDMI provides not only capital, but also brings access to a worldwide collection of diverse businesses within Bertelsmann and via our broader network of media, platform and tech connections. Our investment areas include Next Gen Media, Web3, Enterprise SaaS and Fintech.
BDMI invests out of two funds: a seed fund and a traditional early stage fund. For the seed fund, we typically prefer 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. We don’t usually lead seed stage investments, but prefer to join a syndicate with a lead already in place.
In BDMI’s main fund, we typically pursue Series A and Series B rounds with an initial investment of $500k to $10m plus reserves for follow-ons. We are comfortable leading an investment, co-leading or joining a syndicate with other strategic or financial investors. Depending upon the size of our investment, we usually hold voting board seats or observer seats. We invest in companies based in North America, Europe and Israel.
Bertelsmann is a media, services, and education company that operates in about 50 countries around the world. It includes the entertainment group RTL Group, the trade book publisher Penguin Random House, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato, the Bertelsmann Printing Group, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds. The company has 145,000 employees and generated revenues of €18.7 billion in the 2021 financial year. Bertelsmann stands for creativity and entrepreneurship. This combination promotes first-class media content and innovative service solutions that inspire customers around the world.