South Florida-based Ocean Azul Partners closes Fund II at over $40m

South Florida-based Ocean Azul Partners announced it has completed fundraising for its second fund with total commitments exceeding $40 million.

Bill Pruitt, Managing Director, Ocean Azul: "We are pleased to announce the final closing of our second fund and are deeply grateful to all of our investors, many of whom participated in both funds, whose confidence and support allows us to help create future business leaders across the world. As emerging managers, we will continue to focus on bringing our investors what we hope will be industry-leading returns."

Ocean Azul has been in operation since 2017 when its five partners – all long-time members of the South Florida community – came together:

• Bill Pruitt, angel investor and Managing Partner of Arthur Andersen in Florida, the Caribbean, and Venezuela until 1999
• Salomon Sredni, angel investor and until 2016, CEO of Nasdaq-traded TradeStation Group, which he took public and later sold to TSE-traded Monex Group
• Alex Tellez, angel investor and tech entrepreneur; founder of Cellit Technologies, which he sold to Aspect Software, and Neutralogistics, which he sold to STG Logistics
• Lisette Tellez, former managing partner of Dorm Room Fund; MIT Computer Science & Engineering; Committee Member of LatinxVC
• David Zinn, co-founder, angel investor, and experienced startup operating advisor; founding CFO of DealerUps, acquired by JM Family Enterprises; Florida Venture Forum board of directors

While fundraising, Ocean Azul invested in 9 companies, Digbi Health, Emerge, Simetric, 1Touch.io, Lynq Technologies, Bandwango, Mosaic, Swift Sync, and 5x5 Technologies. Once fully invested, the fund expects to have 20 to 24 core portfolio companies. Of these, Ocean Azul is aiming for 20% to be Israeli companies that have a U.S. market focus.

As one of the early venture capital firms in South Florida, Ocean Azul believes it plays an important role in supporting the local ecosystem. So in addition to its core investments, the fund has allocated up to 5% of its capital to Florida companies that it is excited to support but may not yet meet all of its investment criteria.

www.oceanazulpartners.com