Caruso raises $3.2M Seed led by Icehouse Ventures

We’re excited to announce that Caruso has closed a $3.2 million Seed round led by Icehouse Ventures, with investment from GD1, Chris Heaslip, founder of Pushpay, and Rae Capital.

We’re extremely grateful we get the opportunity to work with these industry leaders. We’re excited to continue building Caruso into the best-in-class fund operation and administration platform, that fund managers actually enjoy using.

About Caruso

Today, fund managers operate countless software systems to manage their fund operations, and for the most part, these systems aren’t fit for purpose and don't integrate with each other or with a central platform.

Fund managers need a single source of truth for their investor data so they can manage all their fund operations effortlessly in one place - onboard investors, manage compliance, raise capital, issue distributions, and everything in between.

That’s what Caruso is, and that’s what we do. We offer a SAAS platform and complimentary services for fund managers to help them delight their investors, raise more capital, build stronger capital relationships, improve operating efficiency and reduce risk.

Our story

The business was co-founded by myself (Mark Hurley) and Oliver Shaw. Caruso's technology was developed as an internal tool inside a fund management business, before being spun out into its own independent company early in 2023.

Our software was originally just meant to streamline operations inside our own fund management business, but very quickly, we had other fund managers enquiring about our software and how they might be able to license it for their businesses. By the end of 2022, that noise became too loud to ignore, so we did some research and found an unaddressed problem we were perfectly positioned to solve in a vast and growing market.

We believe that the effort to maintain, understand and update investor data across multiple siloed systems is secretly the cause of almost all the administrative work of managing a fund. And the problem is industry-wide, across fund managers of all types and sizes. We're helping fund managers break free from expensive, clunky, legacy systems and empowering them with modern tools to help them and their investors thrive.

Progress to date

Without any marketing or sales resources to date, we have already within just six months of launch, gained an impressive list of clients including some well-known fund managers such as Mackersy Property, Roger Dickie, and Marquette. We already have over $5.2 billion of assets managed on the platform.

For Mackersy Property, one of New Zealand’s leading commercial real estate fund managers with over $2 billion AUM, moving to Caruso was all about delivering value to their investors.

"At Mackersy Property, we've always prided ourselves on being ahead of the curve in leveraging technology to add value to our operations and, by extension, to our investors," said Omea Willows, Mackersy’s Director, Investor Relations & Operations. "Caruso provides our investors with the industry’s best investment experience while simultaneously reducing our administrative costs. This operational efficiency allows us to deliver improved value to our investors and concentrate on our core competency—delivering strong-performing, long-term real estate investments."

For Marquette Properties, a Brisbane-based commercial real estate fund manager with over $1.2 billion AUM, and averaged realised returns of 21% per annum, moving to Caruso helps them focus on what they do best.

"At Marquette Properties, we are keen to embrace technology to improve our business and our management of assets and investments,” said Toby Lewis, Marquette’s CEO. “The technology we have is fine, but what Caruso has built is utopian for property fund managers and we think it will become THE technology for everyone who does what we do. Caruso will allow us to keep our team size tight and this will help us focus on what we do best—acquiring quality properties to improve, add-value and generate above-market returns for our investors."

What’s next

While this is an exciting milestone, it’s just that; there is still a long journey ahead of us. We are staying focused on our commitment to building the world’s leading private market fund management platform.

The capital from this round will allow Caruso to:

• Further, invest in our engineering team to increase the velocity of new features.
• Invest in AI-related features across our product.
• Build out a layer of complimentary fund administration services to better serve our clients.
• Grow our footprint in Australia by opening a new office.
• Grow our sales and marketing team.

Lastly, we are incredibly grateful for our clients. We know that so much of where we are today is because of your support and trust. Thank you, and we’re looking forward to continue building tools for you.