While in the Bay Area, Rimer and some friends began a company to digitize images of famous artwork and sell the downloads, forging exclusive deals with galleries such as the Louvre and the Uffizi Gallery to commercialize the images.[1]
Rimer became a general partner of The Barksdale Group in 1999, where he invested in a dozen companies including Crossgain (acquired by BEA Systems), Ofoto (acquired by 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 Index partner Mike Volpi.[7]
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 (acquired by CBS for $280 million).[8][2]
More recently, Rimer has received growing public attention for leading Index's investments in Discord, Patreon, Glossier, Beauty Pie, Otrium, Grailed, and Goat.[13] Most notable among his latest batch of investments is Figma, an online collaborative design platform. Index wrote a seed-stage check for Figma in 2013.[14] In 2022, Adobe announced it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, making Index's share of the company worth $2.6 billion if the deal closes.[15] However, numerous news report indicated that the U.S. Department of Justice may sue to block the acquisition for violating anti-trust rules.[16]
The New York Times' and CB Insights' list of the Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, each year since the list's inception (2016 through 2018)[30][31][32]
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.[34]
Philanthropy and non-profit involvement
Rimer serves on the board of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, a network of drop-in healthcare centers across the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, with the aim of helping cancer patients.[3] He was formerly on the board of trustees at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).[4]