Neil Rimer is a Swiss-Canadian venture capitalist and co-founder of Index Ventures, a VC firm focusing on Europe, the US, and Israel. Index Ventures has raised $13 billion in funding and operates out of London, New York, Geneva, and San Francisco.

About

Rimer was born in Montreal, Quebec, but grew up in Switzerland, where he attended the International School of Geneva. He earned a B.A. in history and economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Upon graduating, he returned to Europe with aspirations of growing the region’s VC industry, which was virtually nonexistent at the time.

In 1991, Rimer helped his father exit his bond trading company, and then spent several years at Index Securities, where he connected institutional investors with European technology startups.

This work served as the predecessor to Index Ventures, which he co-founded with his brother David and former McKinsey consultant Giuseppe Zocco in 1996. Their goal was to bring “Silicon Valley-style investing to Europe.” Rimer recalls how VC was so new to Europe, “We started every meeting with a slide that was literally ‘What is VC?’”

Rimer was instrumental in raising the firm’s first pilot fund of $17 million, followed by a $180 million funding round in 1998. In 2003, Index began investing in Israeli companies. By 2007, the bulk of the firm’s portfolio was in Europe and Israel. To date, Index Ventures has invested in dozens of Israeli companies, including MyHeritage, Outbrain, Lacoon, Adallom, and Wiz.

In 2021, Rimer stepped down as an active partner at Index, but has continued to manage his portion of the portfolio and to support his partners as a consultant. Index Ventures currently operates from London, New York, Geneva, and San Francisco. It has raised more than $15 billion over the last 30 years and has several investors on the Midas List Europe.

Philanthropy and Board Memberships

Rimer is a member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and also became co-chair in 2019. He is a founder of the Geneva Committee of HRW and has served on the European Leadership Council of Harvard Business School, the Taxfix board, the board of the football club, U.C. Sampdoria, and many other boards.

In January 2022, Neil Rimer, together with his father and brothers, donated $13 million to McGill University.

Notable Investments

Notable investments by Neil Rimer’s company include SCM Microsystems (now Identiv), Virata, a chipmaker, Betfair, Skype, Numerical Technologies, Genmab, Funding Circle, HouseTrip, PhotoBox, and more.

In 2013, Rimer headed the team at Index Ventures that led a $130 million funding round in Supercell, which spurred the Forbes article, “Is This the Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?” Later that year, SoftBank and GungHo Online Entertainment acquired 51% of Supercell for $1.53 billion.

In the News

In 2017, Neil Rimer was named the number one venture capitalist in Europe in Forbes’ inaugural Midas List Europe. In 2018, he was once again featured on the Forbes Global Midas list and the New York Times list of the top venture capitalists in the world.

In 2021, Index had seven portfolio companies worth over $1 billion go public, including Roblox and Robinhood, which went public at $42 billion and $29.3 billion, respectively. The firm’s success was the subject of the Business Insider article, “Index Ventures is having its best exit year ever, with a host of big portfolio companies going public, including Roblox and Robinhood.”