Portland venture fund Ideaship has raised a third fund totaling $4.7 million that it expects to invest in 40 companies by 2024.
Ideaship invests in companies to help with patents and patent strategy. The fund invests $100,000 at a time through what are essentially in-kind services from its parent company Global Technology Transfer Group. GTT is one of the few companies that works as a patent brokerage and consulting firm.
The first six investments from Ideaship Fund III are:
- Portland-based Canopii, an urban farming and automation startup.
- Portland-based Photon Marine, which is building high-powered electric outboard motors.
- Colorado-based Clickvoyant, an AI and data analysis startup.
- Boston-based Phuc Labs, a hydro robotics startup that separates critical materials from electronic waste
- Santa Cruz, California-based Wonderfil, which is building distribution infrastructure and network for refillable cream products in industries like personal care.
- Bellevue-based mPathic, a software tool that injects empathy into text communication.
Half of the capital for the fund comes from Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp. of America, a U.S. arm of the Japanese conglomerate, and the other half is from individual investors. Across all three funds, Ideaship has invested in 75 companies so far, said Ideaship Managing Director Amanda Oborne.
“We’re exceedingly proud of this first group of Fund III investees,” said Oborne in a written statement. “They include a diverse and creative set of founding teams actively developing technologies that will foster a better shared future for us all. Canopii, Photon Marine, Phuc Labs and Wonderfil are speeding our transition to a climate-smart world and Clickvoyant and mPathic are first-movers in applying AI models to improve business outcomes.”
With this investment, each company will get patent work from GTT’s team of experts. This means getting patents filed as well as a foundational patent strategy for these startups. Having patents squared away is frequently something later-stage investors look for.
“We’re grateful to bring the patent strategy firepower of GTT Group to startups via Ideaship,” said GTT Group and Ideaship founder Michael Lubitz, in a written statement. “We want technical founders to own the business behind their business so they can ultimately create the most value for their teams.”
Ideaship works with U.S.-based startups that have patentable technology. This often means hardware, medical devices, biotech and some software, if it can be patented. After the initial investment and patent work the firm can also do follow-on investments that are more typical of venture capital, Oborne said. The group goes to its limited partners to see if they want to invest more and a special purpose vehicle is created for a capital investment.
The group has a lot of Pacific Northwest investors, but limited partners can be anywhere, Oborne said.
The first Ideaship fund was $4.76 million in 2018 and the second was $3.22 million in 2020. Oborne expects the fund to stay on a cadence of every of couple years. Though the funds are still relatively young, it has had some exits. One was the 2022 acquisition of The Wild, an augmented and virtual reality startup, by software maker Autodesk. That company was in Fund I.
Ideaship’s parent company GTT was founded in 1997. It works with big companies that have patent portfolios and helps them buy and sell those assets. For instance, if a company has patents for a business line it is exiting, those patents can be valuable and can be sold to someone else. The group also does portfolio reviews and valuations as well as strategy.
