Internet Capital Group

Actua

Type	Public company
Industry	Business-to-business Multi-Vertical Saas
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Radnor, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Number of employees	800+
Website	www.actua.com

Actua Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTA) is a publicly traded venture capital firm. The company was formerly known as ICG Group, Inc. and changed its name to Actua Corporation in September 2014.

In early 1996, Safeguard Scientifics executives Ken Fox and Walter Buckley spotted an emerging market in business-to-business e-commerce, or B2B as it would become known. They left their former employer to found Internet Capital Group (ICG), a venture capital firm aimed at this new business sector. Buckley explained, "We liked B2B because we knew who the customers were and could see they would be easier to lock in than consumers. B2B is grimy and dirty, but you can make a lot of money at it." The pair asked Safeguard head Pete Musser for $5 million in funding, but he insisted on investing $15 million. By May when initial funding completed, Buckley and Fox had raised $40 million to start ICG, twice what they had hoped for. In addition to Safeguard, major investors included Comcast, Compaq, and BancBoston Ventures, and a dozen or so individuals. Initially, the company was organized as a limited-liability corporation.

Following the "keiretsu" model used by Safeguard, ICG would be heavily involved in the operations of the companies it invested in, and the start-ups would do business with each other, increasing the value of all parties. Its annual meetings would become opportunities for CEOs to share their experiences and cut new deals. One member CEO called it "a perfect way to manage chaos." One of ICG's first investments was a website called Water Online. Under the guidance of ICG, Water Online brought in Mark Walsh, head of AOL's B2B division, in late 1997 to run the company. The company became VerticalNet, expanded into 47 different industries, and became one of the first B2B companies to go public.

Spurning opportunities to invest in promising business-to-consumer companies such as CDNow and AutoWeb, ICG impressed its core audience and developed a reputation as "the VCs to see if you were an entrepreneur with a B2B idea."GE Capital joined many of the original investors in contributing to a second round of financing in July 1998 which generated another $70 million. Early investments began to pay off and ICG generated additional funds by selling off some of its positions. However, unlike traditional venture capitalists, Buckley and Fox envisioned that ICG would hold most of its investments long-term (ten years or longer). The duo were ambitious, aiming to have a stake in 80% of the B2B market, and saw ICG as the "GE of e-commerce" – they wanted each of their investments to be a top-two player in their market. To support this goal, ICG aggressively hired top talent from companies such as Microsoft, McKinsey & Co., and GE itself. The work environment was casual, or as one partner company CEO called it "almost like a fraternity".