Investment Focus

As a strategic fund, our investment focus is defined by the technology needs of our shareholders.

Broadly stated, any technology product considered for use by the CIO of a large bank or brokerage is viewed as an investment opportunity. The more strategic the product the bigger the win, but tactical niche solutions are relevant as well, and typically enjoy a shorter sales cycle.

Because finding the unexpected is more important than filling a shopping list, it’s impossible to list all possible areas of interest, but here are some examples:

• Security, data privacy, and disaster recovery
• Electronic payments
• Electronic settlements including straight-through processing (STP)
• Network and bandwidth management
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), including web services
• Differentiated products targeting high (and low) net worth individuals
• Credit applications, targeted at consumers or enterprises

Chess generally invests in companies headquartered in the United States, and generally prefers earlier-stage rounds. Chess investments typically range from one to three million dollars per round. Chess both leads funding rounds, and co-invests.