We are excited to announce Cotter Cunningham is joining NCV as our newest Entrepreneur in Residence today. Cotter is an entrepreneur and CEO with a great track record of developing and leading technology and consumer businesses. His most recent success was as Founder, CEO & Chairman at RetailMeNot. Cotter’s background is very much in sync with the NCV themes and early stage investment strategy.
NCV’s co-founder Thomas Ball has worked with Cotter for the last 10+ years, where he was the first investor and board member at RetailMeNot and remained on the board through the IPO until the subsequent take private transaction. In addition, when we were starting NCV, Cotter was nice enough to let us camp out in his office and use his conference room (and look the other way when we sneaked some of the great snacks and other perqs they had at RMN). Since the founding of NCV, Cotter has been an advisor and mentor to a number of entrepreneurs we have backed, a co-investor in a number of companies we have invested in, and an investor in NCV I and NCV II. In addition he has been a very active member of our Entrepreneurs Council which he will remain on.
Cotter was previously the founder and CEO of RetailMeNot, Inc., a leading savings destination. Cunningham raised nearly $300 million from investors including JP Morgan, Austin Ventures, GV (Google Ventures), Norwest Venture Partners and IVP. He grew RetailMeNot organically and through numerous acquisitions from a startup to a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ: SALE) with approximately $300 million in revenue and 600 employees in the U.S. and EU. In 2017, RetailMeNot sold to a subsidiary of MacAndrew & Forbes. After the sale, Cunningham remained Chairman of RetailMeNot and served as Managing Partner of MacAndrews & Forbes’ Ventures, actively evaluating technology initiatives and potential investments.
We are thrilled to have Cotter as part of the team and start exploring new consumer internet opportunities as the next step in his storied career. Given his background and broad skill set, we are hopeful this results in a successful investment in a startup company where he comes up with the next RetailMeNot idea or it could be a page from the playbook of RetailMeNot where he ends up acquiring a business and rapidly scaling it.
“I’ve watched from the start when Mike and Tom showed up in my office and showed me the first investor pitch for NCV,” states Cotter. “I’ve had a front row seat the whole time watching them build the best VC firm in Austin and the Next Coast and been able to be a part of their ‘Built by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs’ culture and philosophy. I’m excited to be able to continue our relationship and work together to build a great company together.”
Welcome to NCV Cotter!
