Bain, Cendana, Pritzker back Braze co-founder’s new fund

MXV Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Braze co-founder and angel investor Mark Ghermezian, has closed on $52 million for its debut fund.

The fund’s limited partners include Bain Capital Ventures, Cendana Capital, Pritzker Group, K5 Global, Social Leverage and general partners of “top-tier funds and family offices,” according to a statement.

Regulatory filings show that the New York firm began fundraising in November 2021. It closed on a total of $50.4 million from 126 investors, according to its latest SEC filing, which notes that a vehicle called MXV Capital I LP received $48.1 in commitments from 112 LPs and a vehicle called MXV Exemption Fund LP received just over $2 million in commitments from 14 LPs.

MXV takes its name from the formula for momentum, which is mass times velocity. Its website displays its name as m]x[v.

Ghermezian had a smash hit with Braze, a maker of customer engagement software. The company was valued it $8.4 billion at the time of its public offering in November 2021, according to a Bloomberg report. Braze previously raised $175 million in venture capital from 18 investors, including Battery Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Blumberg Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Crunchbase reported.

As an angel investor, Ghermezian was an early investor in companies such as Nutanix (IPO), Lattice, Thoughtspot, Outreach, Rubrik, Wag (IPO) and Riskified (IPO), along with 50 other investments, largely focused on SaaS, according to the MXV statement.

“As the founder and former CEO of Braze, Mark has tremendous experience as an operator that can grow and run a successful business,” Cendana founder Michael Kim said in the statement. “He has a unique lens as a SaaS founder-turned-investor which allows him to unearth exceptional investment opportunities.”

Ghermezian added, “I feel like a co-founder with each of our portfolio companies, and could not be more excited to officially launch [MXV]. We want to be the best partner to our founders and be the fund all SaaS founders think of when they are raising their pre-seed or seed rounds.”

MXV focuses on B2B enterprise SaaS companies. To date, it has made 17 investments. Check sizes range from $500,000 to $1.5 million and the firm targets 10 percent ownership with each of its investments. Out of the 17 companies the firm has backed, two were incubated by Ghermezian: Gynger, a fintech financing B2B SaaS contracts for SMBs, and Tildei, a conversational first lifecycle marketing platform.