Background
Rimer was born in Canada, but grew up in Geneva, Switzerland.
Rimer was born in Canada, but grew up in Geneva, Switzerland.
He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in history and literature.
He established the firm"s London office in 2002 and the San Francisco office in 2012, and has become a leading voice on venture capital in Europe and Silicon Valley. After graduating, Rimer moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in California. They made exclusive deals with galleries such as the Louvre and the Uffizi Gallery to commercialize the images.
In 1994, Rimer joined Hambrecht & Quist (now owned by Justice of the Peace Morgan), where he began an Internet sector equity research group.
He was managing director and underwriting analyst for Amazon, Netscape and Verisign. He helped to take Netscape public.
Rimer became a general partner of The Barksdale Group in 1999, where he invested in a dozen companies including Crossgain (acquired by Bureau of Economic Analysis Systems), Ofoto (rebranded as Kodak) and Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft), before joining Index in 2002 to establish the London office. He later co-founded the San Francisco office in 2012 with Mike Volpi.
In his early years at Index, Rimer made a series of notable investments in infrastructure and services companies such as Skype, MySQL and Last.fm.
More recently he led the firm’s investments in Patreon, Good Eggs, Anki, Boku, Dubsmash, Dropbox, Etsy (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:ETSY), Factual, Farfetch, Flipboard, 1stdibs, King (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:ATVI), Nasty Gal, Niara, RightScale, Viagogo, and Zesty. He also serves on the board of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres and SFMOMA. He was previously a director at KVS (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:SYMC), Last.fm (New York Stock Exchange:Columbia Broadcasting System), Lovefilm (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:AMZN), MySQL (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:ORCL), Neoteris (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:JNPR), Sky Public Limited Company (LON:SKY), Skype (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:MSFT) and Trialpay (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation:V). Rimer has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top global VCs four times and to Fortune Magazine"s 40 under 40 list of business’s rising young stars.
He is a fixture at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, an annual gathering of business leaders, political figures, and major figures in the philanthropic and cultural spheres.