Category Archives: Venture Funding

Benchmark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Clarizen, Collaboration, DAG Ventures, Project management, Social, Venture Funding

Clarizen Gets $12 Million for Social Project Collabortion

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Clarizen today announced that it has completed a $12 million Series E financing round led by Vintage Partners. Existing Clarizen shareholders Benchmark Capital, Carmel Ventures, DAG Ventures and Opus Capital also participated. The funding will support continued expansion, strategic partnerships, and product development designed to enhance the end user experience.

Clarizen makes organizations more effective by combining the tools needed to plan and execute work within a collaborative cloud-based environment that puts data, structure, and communications all in one place. Simple to use, yet robust, Clarizen’s project management suite eliminates the need for multiple disconnected planning and communication tools. Clarizen’s unified, collaborative environment gives team members and organizations better visibility into their work and provides the tools to get projects executed more quickly.

“Clarizen’s vision for today’s social workforce reflects our understanding that successful organizations need much more than task management or another way to communicate,” said Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO and co-founder of Clarizen. “The workplace we enable is powerful, because Clarizen helps move information and communications out of silos, gives them structure, and makes this data actionable. This funding comes at an exciting point as we look to accelerate our investment in mobile access and global expansion.”

Clarizen recently introduced its native Android application to complement its existing iPhone app, providing users with real-time access to their tasks and projects from their mobile devices. In addition, the company introduced Clarizen Anywhere, a browser-application and Microsoft Outlook-based toolbar that provides users with immediate access to Clarizen without the need to login.


Alert Logic, Covera Ventures, DFJ Mercury, Updata Partners, Venture Funding

Alert Logic gets $12.2 Million for Cloud Security

Image representing Alert Logic as depicted in ...

Alert Logic (Security-as-a-Service for the cloud) today announced that it has closed a $12.2 million round of financing led by new investors Industry Ventures and DH Capital, and joined by all existing investment firms and several members of the company’s management team including Updata Partners, Covera Ventures, DFJ Mercury, OCA Ventures and Access Venture Partners. Alert Logic will use the funding to accelerate the growth of its new Web Security Manager product line, including deployment of Web Security Manager throughout Alert Logic’s channel of hosting and cloud service provider partners, and to accelerate the growth and adoption of the company’s new elastic cloud security solutions.

“After tripling the size of our company in less than three years and building a customer base of over 1,700 customers representing nearly $30 million in annual recurring revenue, we remain focused on delivering security and compliance solutions to customers of cloud providers,” said Gray Hall, president and CEO at Alert Logic. “Adding new product lines such as Web Security Manager, and new deployment models such as our elastic cloud solutions, is exactly what our customers and partners are asking us to do. This additional capital gives us the ability to move more aggressively in each of these strategic new directions.”

“We are excited about adding Alert Logic as a portfolio company,” said Justin Burden, partner at Industry Ventures. “Having previously invested in security industry leaders such as Fortinet, Sourcefire and Tripwire, we consider cloud security to be one of the strongest investment themes in the IT industry and we believe Alert Logic will prove to be a cloud security market leader.”

“DH Capital has been the leading provider of financial advisory services to hosting and cloud service providers since the inception of the industry segment,” said Peter Hopper, co-founder and CEO of DH Capital. “Alert Logic has the strongest and most-developed channel of service provider partners in the industry, and is setting the standard for delivering SaaS managed security service solutions.”

Alert Logic’s Security-as-a-Service solutions provide customers four distinct advantages: market-leading security tools, a fully outsourced and managed SaaS delivery model, integrated 24×7 Security Operations Center (SOC) services to monitor and provide expert guidance, and the ability to deploy wherever a customer has IT infrastructure – including the cloud.


Arrowpath Venture Partners, Identity management, Venture Funding, Xceedium

Xceedium Gets $12 Million for Identity Management

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Xceedium, Inc., provider of Zero Trust privileged identity and access management solutions, today announced that is has closed a $12 million Series B financing extension led by existing investor ArrowPath Venture Partners. The new funds will be used to fuel continued growth and expansion of the company, with specific emphasis on Xceedium’s new cloud-based initiatives. As part of this aggressive growth strategy, the company also announced today the launch of Xsuite Cloud.

“The market for privileged identity and access management solutions is constantly growing and the push for enterprises to move to the cloud has only increased its potential,” said Morgan Rodd at ArrowPath Venture Partners. “Xceedium’s track record and strong management team were the key drivers for this extension. Xceedium has proven resources in place to capitalize on the growing demand for products that control and monitor privileged network access.”

Large enterprises and global government agencies have adopted Xsuite as a critical component of their security infrastructure to meet stringent security and compliance requirements – eliminating the risk of allowing employees and third parties unchecked privileged access to their networks. This financing round allows Xceedium to maintain that leadership position and to aggressively fuel its cloud-based initiatives with Xsuite Cloud. Xsuite Cloud is a comprehensive privileged identity and access management platform designed to provide additional protection for organizations that are taking advantage of the cost, power and scalability of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in conjunction with existing datacenter infrastructure.

“We are very pleased to be announcing this latest round of financing coincident with the unveiling of our new Xsuite Cloud offering,” said Glenn Hazard, Xceedium CEO. “We are seeing significant adoption of our privileged identity and access management solutions within both the commercial and federal sectors. As these customers adopt cloud and hybrid architectures, Xsuite Cloud along with this latest funding extension uniquely positions us to take full advantage of this growing market opportunity.”

In addition to ArrowPath Venture Partners, new investor Western Technology Investment joined existing investors in the Series B financing extension.


Private placement, Speech Technology, Venture Funding, Voice

Voice Assist Closes $800,000 Strategic Private Placement

Voice Assist, Inc. (speech enabled handsfree safe driving solutions) today announced that it has closed a private placement yielding gross proceeds of $800,000. The terms include the sale of 5,333,333 shares of restricted common stock priced at $0.15 per share. In addition, the company has issued five year callable warrants to purchase up to an additional 5,333,333 shares of common stock at $0.50 per share, which would provide the company with up to $2.6 million of additional working capital if exercised.

“We are excited to participate as a significant strategic shareholder in Voice Assist,” said Paul Arena, Chief Executive Officer of Augme Technologies, Inc.. “This funding should allow Voice Assist the growth capital to accelerate its market penetration and sales cycle and to continue to innovate its speech platform into the smartphone, automotive and other mobile device industries. We are also impressed with Voice Assist’s intellectual property covering speech-driven browsing of cloud-based address books, music libraries and speech-driven updates to social networks including Facebook, Twitter and leading CRM platforms including Salesforce.com. We see a tremendous growth opportunity in these sectors and feel that Voice Assist is well positioned to become a market leader.”

“We believe the growth capital and relationship opportunities provided by strategic investors such as Augme Technologies can support the integration of speech control functionality into mobile marketing,” said Michael Metcalf, Chief Executive Officer of Voice Assist, Inc. “We also appreciate the participation in this private placement by a group of seasoned telecom and digital media executives who understand how our technology can be applied not only to mobile devices but also to landlines, VoIP lines and in other modes of communication.”

The funding package was managed by Source Capital Group, Inc., a boutique investment bank focused on emerging growth companies involved in the Communications, Internet, Digital Media, Energy, and Clean Tech industries. “We’re excited about Voice Assist because its technology can be used on any phone, which opens up a massive market opportunity unlike other solutions, which only run on the data channel of a smartphone,” said Vik Grover, CFA, Senior Managing Director.


Adams Capital Management, Hardware, NextIO, Venture Funding

NextIO Gets $12.3 Million for Datacenter IO Consolidation

NextIO today announced it has closed a Series F funding round of $12.3 million. This round included investment by existing investors and an undisclosed strategic investor. NextIO, which demonstrated significant growth in 2011, will use the new funds to further expand sales and marketing efforts and to further expand NextIO’s family of I/O consolidation solutions.

“Our investors have a strong history of successful investments in companies at the forefront of a number of technologies. This investment is important not only as a source of capital, but as a vote of confidence in our strategy for datacenter I/O consolidation,” said K.C. Murphy, President and CEO of NextIO. “After a very successful 2011 built around our vCORE and vNET product lines, we intend to double our revenue in 2012. Closing this funding is a critical step to achieving that goal, as it allows us to take our I/O consolidation solutions and marketing strategies to the next level in the U.S. and throughout the world.”

NextIO’s customer base includes technology leaders in a variety of markets, including managed service providers, internet service providers, aerospace, automotive technologies, oil and gas, government, and finance. In 2011 alone, several hundred NextIO I/O consolidation systems were installed into these customers worldwide. NextIO will use the capital from the Series F funding round to grow both its worldwide go-to-market efforts and its product portfolio to further increase revenue and market penetration in 2012 and 2013.

“NextIO’s I/O consolidation products are achieving impressive market penetration in the multi-billion dollar datacenter networking market,” said George Ugras, General Partner at Adams Capital Management. “The explosion of data and the migration to the cloud presents a great opportunity in this market, and NextIO is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these trends as customers look for next-generation networking solutions. The customer adoption to date has validated the value proposition for NextIO’s products, so we felt this was the right time to further invest in the company and capitalize on the tremendous demand we are seeing.”

NextIO’s portfolio of rack-level I/O consolidation solutions includes products for datacenter network consolidation, GPGPU computing, and high-performance storage. The newest product in the NextIO portfolio is the vNET I/O Maestro, which provides server connectivity at the rack level to both Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks without the need for changes in governance models or proprietary, hard to support I/O drivers. The result is the elimination of expensive 10Gb Ethernet NICs, Fibre Channel HBA, multiple top-of-rack leaf switches, and an up to 80% reduction in the number of cables at the back of the rack. By simplifying server I/O, the vNET I/O Maestro significantly reduces CapEx, power consumption and cooling, while providing the ability to dynamically reconfigure I/O resources across servers as the needs in the datacenter evolve due to business conditions.


Crosslink Capital, Foundation Capital, Human Resources, Keating Capital, Platinum Technology, SilkRoad technology, Tenaya Capital, Venture Funding

Keating Capital Invests $5 Million in SilkRoad Technology

Image representing SilkRoad technology as depi...

Keating Capital, Inc. announced that it has made a $5 million investment in the Series C Convertible Preferred Stock round of SilkRoad Technology Holdings, Inc. (“SilkRoad”). Keating joined new investor, NTT Finance, and existing investors, including Azure Capital, Crosslink Capital, Foundation Capital and Tenaya Capital, in the Series C financing round which raised a total of $35 million.

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, SilkRoad is a global provider of cloud-based social talent management software, including tools for human resource management systems, recruiting, onboarding, learning, and performance management. SilkRoad’s comprehensive suite of human resource management solutions, the SilkRoad® Life Suite® product line, assists companies with managing the entire employee life cycle from pre-hire to retire.

SilkRoad was founded by technology entrepreneur Flip Filipowski, who previously started Platinum Technology, a database management company that completed an IPO and was subsequently sold to Computer Associates in 1999.

SilkRoad has recently been recognized with a bronze medal in the 2012 Stevie® Awards for the Innovation in Customer Service category and was named as a finalist in the 2012 CODiE™ Awards for excellence in its software solutions. The Stevie® Awards were created in 2002 to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. The CODiE™ Awards recognize excellence in the business software, digital content and education technology industries.

“We believe software as a Service (or “SaaS”) businesses with growing streams of recurring revenue are valuable assets; SilkRoad is one such company operating in the human resources space,” stated Timothy J. Keating, CEO of Keating Capital. “Flip and his team understand from past experience what it takes to transform an idea into a growing private company and beyond. We are delighted to become a direct investor in SilkRoad as they progress the company to the next level,” added Mr. Keating.

SilkRoad is Keating Capital’s third new portfolio company investment in 2012. With this investment, Keating Capital has now made investments of $49.5 million in 17 portfolio companies, including $13.6 million invested year-to-date.


Aquantia, Computer Hardware, Ethernet, Hardware, Hosting, Internet Technology, Telecommunications Equipment, Venture Funding

Aquantia Gets $35 Million for High-speed Datacenter Ethernet

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Aquantia, a developer of High Speed Ethernet connectivity solutions for cloud computing and large scale data center deployments, announced today it has completed a Series F financing of $35 million, with new investor RUSNANO leading the round, joined by current investors. RUSNANO will invest $25 million, and current and new investors will contribute $10 million to the financing round.

Aquantia successfully launched its industry-leading 40nm 10GBASE-T PHY chipset in 2011, as a critical ingredient to emerging LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) platforms for new data center servers and switches. With Intel’s March 2012 launch of its Romley generation LOM server platforms, the 10GBASE-T interconnect market is now seeing an explosive uptick. According to Crehan Research, shipments of 10GBASE-T in Data Center switching and servers will see more than a seven-fold increase from 2011 to 2012, reaching a total of approximately 6.5 million ports in 2013, and almost 20 million the following year.

Aquantia will establish a new design center in Russia. The Russian R&D center will support the headquarter Silicon Valley R&D group in chip design and software development, as well as product testing.

“Aquantia is the only 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) silicon provider to meet our investment criteria in the high-speed data center interconnect space,” said RUSNANO managing director Sergey Polikarpov. “We believe big data and global data center traffic are going to see a tremendous swell in the next several years, and Aquantia’s technology is essential to improving server performance while realizing greater cost efficiencies. This is a premium opportunity for us to participate in the market growth and its rewards.”

“NEA is excited to continue to support Aquantia as the company expands operations to meet the ever-increasing demand for its superior technology,” added NEA partner Rohini Chakravarthy. “We see network capacity build-up expected to support 15 billion connected devices by 2015. This represents a tremendous opportunity for Aquantia.”

“This past year has been tremendously gratifying, as it has been the culmination of hard work, innovation and powerful partnering in the 10GE and LOM space,” explained Aquantia’s president and CEO Faraj Aalaei. “We are truly ecstatic about the takeoff of Intel’s Romley platform and what it means as a watershed event for the near-term ubiquity of 10GBASE-T in the data center as well as future opportunity across the Enterprise space. This is what we have been working toward, and our funding partners in this and all previous rounds have positioned us for tremendous delivery success.”

Go to http://www.aquantia.com/news-and-media/ for footage of recent discussions on 10GBASE-T, and follow Aquantia on Twitter for ongoing updates on 10Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in the data center and cloud computing environments.

About Aquantia

Aquantia’s 10Gigabit Ethernet ICs are at the heart of cloud computing and large-scale data center deployments taking place today. This market segment is going through a very fast transition, with astounding growth in the total amount of compute power and the move to faster connectivity. This has in turn led to a new paradigm for 10Gigabit Ethernet all across the ecosystem. With its 10GBASE-T silicon products, Aquantia delivers to its OEM customers the most versatile and highest performance 10Gigabit Ethernet connectivity solution while providing lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Located in Silicon Valley, Aquantia is a venture-backed company, with strong tier-1 VCs and strategic investor support. For more information, visit www.aquantia.com.

About RUSNANO

RUSNANO was founded in March 2011 as an open joint stock company through reorganization of state corporation Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies. RUSNANO’s mission is to develop the Russian nanotechnology industry through co-investment in nanotechnology projects with substantial economic potential or social benefit. The Government of the Russian Federation owns 100 percent of the shares in RUSNANO. Anatoly Chubais is CEO and chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO.

Work to establish nanotechnology infrastructure and training for nanotechnology specialists, formerly conducted by the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, has been entrusted to the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs, a non-commercial fund also established through reorganization of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies.


BlueRun Ventures, Coupa, El Dorado Ventures, Venture Funding

Coupa Software Gets $22 Million for Cloud-based Spend Optimization

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Coupa Software,  provider of spend optimization software, announced today the completion of a $22 million in Series E financing round led by new investor Crosslink Capital. Venture capital firms Battery Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures continued their commitment to Coupa by also participating in the round. The latest valuation was a very significant multiple of previous rounds.

“Coupa’s unique technology platform and customer focused approach are disrupting the spend management market,” said Jim Feuille, general partner of Crosslink Capital. “In just the last year, the e-procurement space has found itself at the tipping point in moving to SaaS-based solutions. Coupa is well-positioned to be the leader in the $8 billion Spend Management Market.”[1]

Earlier this year, Coupa introduced several enhancements to its software, once again paving the way for new standards in procurement and expense management. Coupa’s platform lets customers quickly and easily gain visibility and control a company’s spend. With Facebook-like usability and affordable subscription-based pricing, Coupa brings spend control, automation, efficiency and savings to companies striving to improve their bottom line.

“We’ve now had 13 consecutive quarters of new sales growth thanks to our engaged and growing customer base of leaders in their respective fields. This latest round will help fuel the company’s worldwide expansion well beyond 2015,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “We couldn’t be more passionate about our mission of helping companies optimize spend.”

Crosslink Capital General Partner Jim Feuille will join Coupa’s board of directors as a board observer alongside current board members Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa CEO; Brian O’Malley, general partner at Battery Ventures; Jonathan Ebinger, investment partner with BlueRun Ventures; Charles Beeler, general partner with El Dorado Ventures; and Bryan Stolle, general partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures.