Venture Builders is an early stage software focused investment firm. Our investment portfolio includes recurring revenue SaaS business models, niche business to business markets and products with an Artificial Intelligence focus. Venture Builders prefers to invest in unique products that are architecturally superior to competitors with technology or processes that provide barriers to entry to the market.
Mentorship
Venture Builders does not take a majority stake in its investments nor an active role in management, however it does offer active board-level assistance with structuring financial reporting and controls, talent acquisition, market segment analysis, product definition and targeting, pricing and partnership structuring and related contract design and go to market strategy.
A Venture Builders specialty is the construction of business simulations using the Causal modeling system. These simulations capture the inner workings or essence of the business concept, allowing entrepreneurs to test the financial outcomes of various decisions or assumptions.
Principal
Venture Builders LLC is managed by William D. Ivers, Ph.D., a serial entrepreneur who founded and led seven software companies starting in 1978.
During his career, Dr. Ivers has negotiated and consummated over 150 agreements between software companies covering a wide range of collaboration, including marketing, development, merger and acquisition and licensing agreements. He created individual marketing and development strategies for hundreds of software products. He contributed to the development of early CRM and Instant Messaging applications many years before these emerged as a product category. In addition, Dr. Ivers architected one of the first examples of a contract generation system for production of software marketing agreements. Dr. Ivers has also negotiated partner relationships with dozens of vendors, service providers, credit providers and equity investors.
Dr. Ivers graduated from Yale University in Combined Sciences (Chemistry, Physics and Biology) with a senior thesis on artificial intelligence involving the coding of one of the first neural net simulations in 1969.
In addition, Dr. Ivers earned degrees from Harvard University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA. While at Scripps, Dr. Ivers participated in projects including computer modeling of ocean currents and simulation of the motion of a towed instrument package. This simulator played a role in the CIA search for the Russian submarine K129, later brought to the surface by the Hughes Glomar Explorer.
Interested parties may submit brief business plans to: plans@venturebuilders.com