San Diego’s Global Analytics Holdings says it has raised $10 million of a targeted $14 million round that consists of equity investments, options, and rights to securities, according to a recent regulatory filing. The company provides consulting services for business customers and specializes in developing software for statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and neural networks.

The filing indicates the capital is being raised in connection with a merger, acquisition, or exchange offer, but founding CEO Krishna Gopinathan did not respond to a call or e-mail seeking further information. According to the Global Analytics website, Gopinathan was the primary inventor of Falcon Fraud Manager, a neural-network technology developed at San Diego-based HNC Software (now part of Fair Isaac) that is used to protect most credit cards worldwide.

Global Analytics has been operating at least five years and has more than 100 employees, according to its website. A number of key executives at Global Analytics, including the executive vice president of analytics, vice president of products, and vice president of software development, are former HNC employees.

Last year, Global Analytics named Larry Rosenberger, the former CEO of Minneapolis, MN-based Fair Isaac, to its board of directors. The company also noted that Rosenberger and his wife Diane invested in the San Diego startup. Peter Rip, a general partner at San Francisco’s Crosslink Capital, also is on Global Analytics’ board, although Crosslink does not identify Global Analytics as a portfolio company.

Global Analytics also has formed a strategic partnership with Hewitt Associates, the Illinois-based human resources and outsourcing firm, and has been working on what it calls “the objective quantification of the value of human capital investments.” The company says it has been working with Hewitt in recent years to pioneer development of comprehensive models that tie such human resources metrics as talent attraction, retention, and engagement to shareholder value, creating what Hewitt calls its Human Capital Foresight.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Early-stage tech financings are still chugging along, it seems. On the heels of yesterday’s news of a $5.25 million financing of Seattle stealth startup Doxo, I checked in with Keith McCall of Bellevue, WA-based Enroute Systems, a maker of parcel-shipping management software, to hear the latest on his company’s recent financing.

McCall, the company’s founder and CEO, says Enroute has closed an oversubscribed Series A round worth a total of $810,000. That includes more than $500,000 from Keiretsu Forum Northwest earlier this year, and a new investment (as of October) from W.R. “Ford” Smith, the founder of PetSmart. Other investors include Zino Society and Puget Sound Venture Club. (The Series A round also includes $60,000 that Enroute won in Zino Society’s investment forum this fall.)

Enroute makes a Web-based software platform that helps businesses choose the cheapest and fastest delivery service—international, national, or regional carriers—to ship their packages. McCall says the software reduces companies’ shipping costs by about 30 percent.

The startup has moved into new 4,500-square-foot digs in Bellevue—near the Burgermaster and Microsoft’s original offices—as of the start of November. It is now up to a dozen employees and has signed more than 50 business customers, including Zumiez, Natural Partners, Renton Western Wear, Theo Chocolate, BikeWagon.com, and Lumber Liquidators.

McCall, who previously founded Seattle-based e-mail and communications management firm Azaleos, says he expects Enroute to be profitable in the first half of next year, and is now focused on expanding its customer base.

With that in mind, he is already getting ready to raise more money. “For those investors who would like to join our existing angel investors today, we are immediately opening a $500K convertible note, which we anticipate converting to a Series B offering in 2010,” McCall says. He adds that the next formal capital raise “is targeted as a $3 million Series B.”

McCall says that next financing round will be focused on expanding the company’s shipping-management services to Asia and Europe. “We’re interested in continuing our momentum,” he says. “There’s huge opportunity for us to significantly reduce cost for businesses of all sizes.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

When Tom Clancy introduced a panel discussion yesterday at a forum on analytics software, the founder of San Diego’s Tao Venture Partners said the forum was “founded four years ago by people who had an interest in seeing San Diego get established as a leading cluster in the analytics space.”

The forum, which is sponsored by the San Diego Software Industry Council, offers an annual snapshot of local developments in a booming industry that has become crucial to business intelligence, data storage and management, and complex decision-making.

Since Robert Hecht-Nielsen founded HNC Software here in 1986, the number of companies that focus on analytics software in San Diego has mushroomed, with more than 100 companies specializing in neural networking, data mining, pattern recognition, and related algorithms and technologies for analyzing data. Yet Clancy and local experts who discussed “opportunities in analytics” lamented that San Diego’s standing as the birthplace of some key companies and technologies has gone largely unrecognized. Among the examples cited:

— HNC, which specialized in technology to analyze credit card transactions, was acquired for $810 million in 2002 by Fair Isaac and Co. and integrated with the Minneapolis, MN-company’s credit-scoring business.

—Urchin Software, a suburban San Diego Web analytics company that developed an assortment of tools for measuring website usage, page views, and other statistics, was acquired by Google in 2005 for an estimated $30 million. Seven months later, Google renamed its Urchin business Google Analytics, and made analytics tools available to Web users for free.

—WebSideStory, a San Diego company that developed website traffic analysis tools, rebranded itself as Visual Sciences in 2007 and was acquired later that same year for $394 million by Utah-based Omniture. (Last month, Omniture was itself acquired by San Jose, CA-based Adobe Systems in a $1.8 billion deal.)

—Carlsbad, CA-based analytics software developer Keylime Software was acquired for $9.5 million in 2003 by Pasadena, CA-based Overture, an advertising distribution network that was later acquired by Yahoo for $1.6 billion.

Such deals reflect a surging awareness of the value of data, says Stephen Coggeshall, a co-founder and chief technology officer for San Diego-based ID Analytics, which uses advanced analytics to search credit databases for telltale signs of identity theft. In terms of technology innovations that will likely lead to forming new companies, Coggeshall says …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

This morning I checked my e-mail, powered by Google, and then used Google Maps to find my way to the Google Kirkland open house. It reminded me a little bit of the scene in “Being John Malkovich” when Malkovich, the actor, finds a portal into his own brain and sees that everyone looks like him and says nothing but, “Malkovich, Malkovich.” OK, I guess the analogy would fit better if I also worked for Google and uttered “Google, Google” all day—but that might even happen sometime, if Google’s pace of hiring keeps up. (Just kidding.)

Engineering and site director Scott Silver, who’s been on the job since June (succeeding Peter Wilson, who left the company), introduced the new Kirkland facility, which has been officially open since August 31 and employs more than 350 people in a unified campus setting. He gave a little history of Google’s Kirkland operation—the first office was at Carillon Point in 2004, Google’s first major presence in the Northwest—and how it has grown and contributed to the company’s products. Google Talk, which does Internet telephony and instant messaging, was born and raised in Kirkland, for instance.

Other areas of focus for the Kirkland office include:

—Search: Webmaster tools, and instant indexing for real-time news.

—Advertising: AdPlanner (see below), AdWords Opportunities (helping advertisers optimize search ads), Google Analytics, and Campaign Insights (a new service released last week that’s around making brand ads more effective).

—Applications: Google Talk, Google Talk Video (within Gmail), Google Maps (including a new application for directions on mobile phones), the Chrome Web browser, YouTube video clips, and Google Sync (for synchronizing your mobile phone).

—Infrastructure: system and corporate billing software for supporting applications at huge scales.

Silver, a former Amazon and Netscape veteran, said he’s “quite proud of what we’ve done here, and immensely happy to come to this day,” and to be able to say Google is here to “create great products and find great engineers.”

I followed up with Silver afterwards, and he confirmed Google Kirkland is actively hiring software engineers, but he didn’t say how many positions are open at the moment. He said his team is doing hundreds of interviews per month, “and we’d love to do more.” I asked him about the 800-pound gorilla down the road, Microsoft, and whether Google is recruiting much talent from …Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle-based Zino Society has announced the winners of its 2009 Zino Zillionaire Investment Funds. Bellevue, WA-based Enroute Systems, a maker of analytics and transportation management software for parcel-shipping businesses, received $60,000. Arlington, WA-based MicroGreen Polymers, a company focused on making plastic products more environmentally sustainable, also took home $60,000. The companies presented to investors back on September 17.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It’s always good to hear about another small Seattle startup that’s bootstrapped and already profitable. Yesterday it was Appature, today it’s AppBank. They may share the first three letters of their names (and bootstrapped profitability), but after that they’re about as different as two Internet software companies can be.

AppBank is a six-person company focused on developing software to help Facebook users create social entertainment applications—and get paid for them. The company is rolling out the public beta version of its site today. The world of Facebook apps is very crowded, of course, but what AppBank is trying to do is give average Facebook users easier ways to make simple apps like quizzes, surveys, and games in their spare time, and more effective ways to make money from them by providing targeted advertising. “It’s the first time a company has paired relevant ads with crowdsourced social entertainment,” says Fred Hsu, AppBank’s founder and CEO.

Hsu started the company in April of this year, together with chief operating officer Joyce Chang. Hsu is the co-founder of Oversee.net, a Los Angeles company that holds Internet domain names and does domain marketing for the search, display, and lead-generation industries. Oversee did $200 million in revenue last year, and Hsu sold a minority stake in the company to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $150 million. Chang, for her part, came from Seattle-based Tracento, which implements Facebook applications like Friend Hugs, Kisses, and Send Flowers. Both UCLA computer science grads, Hsu and Chang are based in Seattle, and the rest of the company’s employees are in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.

What AppBank offers is a quick way to create a Facebook quiz, for example—”What type of underwear are you?” or “Are you left-brained or right-brained?” or some such—and then free tools to …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

A small Seattle-area company is blazing a trail in the crowded field of mobile marketing. Kirkland, WA-based HipCricket, a company founded in 2004 to do mobile marketing for brands and media companies, has been growing its revenue significantly from quarter to quarter and aims to be profitable for the first time by the end of this year.

It’s a big step for HipCricket, which has been diligently chirping away in a nascent but noisy industry. Mobile marketing essentially just means advertising via mobile devices. The sector has gained in popularity since the rise of text messaging, particularly in Europe and Asia. But marketing firms, at least in the U.S., have largely struggled to make much money in mobile. So HipCricket makes for a compelling case study in how to deliver the goods for big brands—all while helping create a new industry.

On Friday, I spoke with Ivan Braiker, HipCricket’s co-founder and chief executive, after his talk at a Northwest Entrepreneur Network venture breakfast. Braiker previously co-founded Satellite Music Network, the first radio network to distribute live, 24-hour satellite programming. He has extensive experience in building radio networks and in the broadcasting industry.

Things at HipCricket have been very busy, he says. “Even in the down economy, the activity level has been incredible,” Braiker says. “Mobile is getting to be better understood on the brand level.” He didn’t disclose any specific sales numbers.

The company was self-funded in its early days, followed by a friends and family round, and then a round of outside investment. HipCricket went public on London’s Alternative Investment Market in November 2007, only to be de-listed this summer after the markets crashed. The firm, which is now privately held, is backed by some prominent investors, including Joe Schocken from Seattle-based Broadmark Capital.

One of its key advantages is its deep relationships in broadcasting. HipCricket’s customers include some 300 local and national radio and TV stations, including KZOK, KUBE, and KOMO-TV in Seattle, and KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. The company also does marketing for about 50 brands, including Arby’s, Macy’s, Coca-Cola, Rite Aid Pharmacy, and Harley-Davidson. “It’s all about creating engaged communities,” Braiker says.

The technology is important too. HipCricket’s software and services, for which it charges a subscription fee, lets broadcasters and brands track response rates to ads based on keywords, type of media, or time of day—all in real-time. Braiker says this is a key differentiator for his business. “There’s a new vendor every day that gets into this. But they don’t understand the millions of dollars of software we have that parses data and comes up with sophisticated analytics,” he says.

HipCricket, which has just shy of 60 employees (it has added nine so far this year), now seems to be growing steadily. Earlier this year, the company expanded to Mexico and is seeing a fair bit of growth in the Latino advertising community. In the next few months, Braiker says, HipCricket will be pursuing some “new, unique things” in the mobile space, including “mobile coupons integrated with point of sale,” a mobile billing service that bypasses wireless carriers, and other e-commerce applications. “We see HipCricket as a full-service mobile marketing company,” he says.

Asked for his advice to entrepreneurs in the sector, Braiker says, “Understand you’re going to need endless energy. You have to clearly see your vision, you have to understand that vision, and never stop evangelizing. If you believe you’re right, you have to stay with it.” He adds that the most important factor in success is, in a word, “tenaciousness.”

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

[Updated 9/15/09 1:20 pm. See below.] Seattle-based Others Online, a Web advertising and optimization startup led by founder and CEO Jordan Mitchell, has been acquired by the Rubicon Project in Los Angeles for an undisclosed price. Mitchell has become vice president of data intelligence for the Rubicon Project, which automates the buying and selling of online advertising. Rubicon announced the news this morning, although the acquisition apparently began in June. Terms of the deal were not released.

“We built Others Online to specifically help publishers leverage data to make more money,” Mitchell said in a statement. “We were looking to partner with a company that was going to use our technology on a massive global scale, and we found that indeed with the Rubicon Project.” On his LinkedIn page, Mitchell refers to Rubicon as “our favorite customer.”

Reached by e-mail, Nicole Jordan of the Rubicon Project says four employees of Others Online (including Mitchell, presumably) have joined Rubicon. They are staying in Seattle but will commute to Los Angeles on a regular basis, she says. [Paragraph added to provide more details of the acquisition.]

The Rubicon Project says that “Others Online’s technology will serve as an enhanced data infrastructure foundation to unite disparate data points from multiple data providers to create a singular, data-rich view of audience for publishers, ad networks, exchanges and audience rep firms.”

Mitchell started Others Online in January 2006. The idea was to offer online publishers “behavioral profiling” software to help them better understand what their audience cares about. Others Online also provides behavioral analytics and ad services to help publishers better target and generate revenues from their audiences. Previously, Mitchell founded an e-business software firm in Seattle, which he sold in 1996 and then became part of Meridian Partners (now Saltmine). He was also the co-founder and CEO of Siaxx, an IT systems management startup. Mitchell got into online advertising through 121Media, which he joined as chief operating officer and director in 2003.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

Portland, OR-based Webtrends, a web analytics software developer, announced in a press release today that it has acquired Seattle-based multivariate testing and site optimization technology maker Widemile. Financial details of the deal were not released. Webtrends said that the deal is part of its plan to lead in enterprise customer intelligence by augmenting its analytics platform with Widemile’s technology.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

When Merck recalled its arthritis drug Vioxx on September 30, 2004, Connecticut-based online pharmacy FamilyMeds wasted no time notifying customers. Within three hours after the recall was announced, an automated telephone system began calling Vioxx users to inform them about the change. But there was a twist—to comply with the federal healthcare privacy law known as HIPAA, the system had to verify that the person on the other end of the line was actually the patient taking the drug. If the answer was yes, the system would go on to explain the recall. If it was no, the system would leave a phone number and passcode so that the patient could call back later.

That kind of interactive voice response technology is all fairly standard today—but in 2004 it was brand new. The company that made it possible was Burlington, MA-based Silverlink Communications. And from this single application—HIPAA-compliant automated phone communications—Silverlink has since built a major consulting and service operation designed to help healthcare providers reach patients with behavior-related messages of all sorts.

Say a big health plan with millions of members wants to nudge members who take a certain drug toward buying a new, cheaper formulation at twice the dose, then splitting the pills before taking them. Silverlink can not only figure out the most cost-effective way to convey that message, but it can follow up by combing pharmacy claims data to see how many people actually switched.

Though I first met Silverlink CEO Stan Nowak at a local conference on “Health 2.0,” the movement to apply Web-based automation and communication to many aspects of the healthcare system, Silverlink doesn’t fit snugly into that category. The company is really about two things: communication—via whatever mechanism, even the old-fashioned telephone or snail mail—and analytics, to find out what effect each message is having and craft more effective ones.

Because Silverlink’s customers have so many customers of their own, the company is able to package each message in many ways, deliver the variants over many channels, and quickly determine which combinations are most effective for each group. For example, if you want to encourage members who are in the 40-to-55 age group to switch from name-brand drugs to generic ones, is it better to emphasize the cost savings, the convenience, or the fact that everyone else is doing it (in other words, applying a bit of peer pressure)? “Effectively, we’re running multiple simultaneous controlled experiments at scale across populations and measuring the results within microsegments of that population,” says Nowak. “It works in a dramatic way to improve communication yields”—meaning real changes in patient behavior.

Founded in 2002, Silverlink has about 100 employees, and has increased its headcount by 40 percent in the past year. The company has raised about $14 million in venture backing, including a $2.1 million Series A round in 2003 led by Sigma Partners, a $5.6 million B round in 2004 led by HLM Venture Partners, and a $6 million Series C round in 2006, also led by HLM. Kaiser Permanente Ventures, the investment wing of the giant California HMO, joined for the C round. Customers include the nationwide health insurer Aetna and leading pharmacy benefit manager Pharmacare. The company doesn’t share financial figures, but it does say that 2008 revenues were up 47 percent over 2007, and that it recently passed the 200 million mark—meaning that many healthcare consumers have received communications administered by Silverlink.

Nowak says Silverlink’s market is still growing, thanks to some big, long-term shifts in the way health insurance works. “The role of the consumer in healthcare has expanded pretty dramatically since 2003, and looks to expand even more as we …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

It was a week of deals before the Fourth of July weekend—partnership deals, funding deals, and even some buyout deals. So let’s just deal ‘em.

—ParAccel, which develops business analytics technologies that accelerate database queries, moved into new digs in San Diego six months ago—after doubling its staff to 60 employees. Now the company, which also has offices in Cupertino, CA, has raised $22 million in a third round of venture funding from Menlo Ventures, Walden International, Bay Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Tao Venture Partners.

—Bakersfield, CA-based Ellis Energy Investments, which mostly operates oil industry service firms, made a shift to renewable energy by acquiring the assets of San Diego’s Pyron Solar. The recapitalized solar technology startup, which is developing industrial-sized solar arrays that concentrate sunlight, plans to unveil a solar array demonstration project it has been working on with San Diego Gas & Electric.

—MojoPages, a San Diego-based online business directory that includes consumer reviews, has raised $5 million in a Series A round of venture funding led by Austin Ventures of Austin, TX. The two-year-old startup plans to use the funds to expand its search business and attract new partners.

—The $100 million invested in San Diego’s V-Vehicle Co. during the three months that ended June 30 was counted among the biggest cleantech venture deals of the second quarter in a report issued by Deloitte and the San Francisco, CA-based Cleantech Group. Researchers say venture capital invested in renewable energy and cleantech startups rebounded to $1.2 billion during the quarter, but that’s still down 44 percent from the same quarter in 2008.

—Reaction Design CEO Bernie Rosenthal said he expects the simulation software developer to grow at 50 percent a year for the next few years. The company, which specializes in technology that models combustion reactions in engines and turbines, is benefitting from increasing environmental restrictions on fossil fuel emissions. The development of new fuels also has engine and turbine designers turning to Reaction Design’s simulation software to help them save on development costs.

—San Diego’s Concerro, which specializes in Web-based software that enables nurses to bid for their work shifts, acquired the assets of CommandAware, a hospital-incident management system, from Los Angeles-based PortBlue. The deal is expected to enable Concerro to expand its business.

—On a final note, I’ve received a number of congratulatory notes concerning Xconomy’s syndication agreement with the San Diego Union-Tribune, which operates the biggest news website in this region. Under our agreement, Xconomy will provide news and feature stories for both SignOnSanDiego.com and San Diego’s largest metro daily newspaper. Thanks for reading!

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It was another busy week for deals in the Northwest, with lots of action in cloud computing software, mobile, and healthcare. Xconomy even got into the act, inking a partnership with The Seattle Times (see below).

—Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) acquired Lexcycle, an e-book startup based in Portland, OR, and Austin, TX. No financial terms were given. Lexcycle makes an online bookstore application called Stanza for desktops and the iPhone. The move is viewed as part of Amazon’s effort to consolidate its position in the e-book reader market for mobile devices.

—Seattle-based Symform, a cloud data storage startup, raised $1.5 million in Series A financing from OVP Venture Partners in Kirkland, WA. Symform, founded in late 2007, has developed an online data backup service for small to medium-sized businesses that is fast and relatively cheap. It is in public beta trials and plans to release its full service later this year. OVP’s Mark Ashida talked about the deal and some broader issues in investment strategy.

—Opscode, a stealthy Seattle startup working on cloud computing infrastructure for businesses, closed $2.5 million in Series A funding, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Founded last year, Opscode says it will use the new cash to hire engineers and other key staff as it gets ready to launch its core cloud service this year.

—Seattle-based PATH, a global health nonprofit, received two grants worth $52 million to combat the spread of HIV, as Luke reported. The three-year grants are from the U.S. Agency for International Development ($35 million) to strengthen communities’ response to HIV in Ethiopia, and from the Canadian International Development Agency ($17 million) to aid HIV prevention efforts.

—Seattle-based LookStat, a maker of Web-based analytics and workflow automation software for the microstock photography industry, raised $500,000 from Seattle’s Founder’s Co-op and individual investors. LookStat is in public beta trials and looking to sell its service to photographers who want to know what kinds of photos are selling where, for example. Co-founder Rahul Pathak talked about what his company is doing, and provided some more context around the deal.

—Ryan reported on the Northwest’s second-biggest financing deal of 2009 so far, Seattle-based NewPath Networks’ $30 million funding led by Charterhouse Group in New York, with Denver-based Meritage Funds also participating. NewPath, founded in 2004, designs and operates wireless technologies such as antenna networks and underground fiber-optic cables for carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, who need to provide wireless coverage in remote and difficult-to-access places.

—Bingen, WA-based Insitu, a developer of drone aircraft, received a one-year, $30 million contract from the Canadian government to ship small, unmanned aerial vehicles in support of Canadian military operations in Afghanistan. Insitu was acquired by Boeing (NYSE: BA) for about $400 million last summer.

—Hillsboro, OR-based Kryptiq, a maker of collaborative software for healthcare providers, sold off its health plan network management software line, called Choreo, to Portico Systems in Blue Bell, PA. Financial terms were not announced. Kryptiq’s core product helps providers share information with patients, labs, and pharmacies.

—Luke broke the news that Redmond, WA-based Asemblon has raised $2.9 million in the first installment of a Series C financing, led by London-based RAB Capital and Japan’s Sojitz Trading. Asemblon is working on a novel technology for storing hydrogen fuel using organic carrier molecules that can release hydrogen on demand, enabling the fuel to be stored at room temperature and without high pressure.

—Lastly, Xconomy has formed a partnership with The Seattle Times, whereby the Business/Technology section of Seattletimes.com gets an automatic feed of news and features headlines from Xconomy Seattle, as Luke announced. This syndication deal comes on the heels of another partnership we formed with the Seattle P-I back in December to share online stories.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It was a very quiet week for deals in the Northwest, with just a trickle of activity in software, security, and biotech.

—Seattle-based Haute Secure, a software firm focused on computer security against malware, raised about $1.6 million in Series A funding. Investors in the round included Silicon Valley firms Baseline Ventures and Sherpalo Ventures.

—LookStat, a Seattle-area startup that makes software for analytics and workflow automation for the microstock photography industry, has received an investment from Founder’s Co-op, a Seattle-based seed-stage fund. (The news was mentioned in passing by investor Andy Sack at a financing talk.) The amount of the investment and the closing date weren’t announced, but Founder’s Co-op tends to invest between $250,000 and $500,000 in early-stage tech companies.

—Luke reported that Seattle-based VPDiagnostics received a $2.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to run a clinical trial of its MRI technology for determining a patient’s risk of stroke. The technology is based on 15-plus years of research at the University of Washington.

—Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners renewed its investment in Fanzter, a Collinsville, CT-based new media company. The $2 million Series B financing round was led by Steamboat Ventures. Fantzer, which was also backed by Seattle investors Curious Office Partners and Rich Barton (from Zillow), runs a celebrity website called Coolspotters.com.

—Seattle startup TrafficGauge, a provider of road traffic information in real time, was acquired by Networks In Motion, a mobile navigation and search company based in Aliso Viejo, CA. Financial terms were not disclosed. TrafficGauge first rolled out a mobile traffic map in Seattle in 2003.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group and Amazon.com have invested in an $8.5 million Series B financing round for Yieldex, an inventory management firm based in New York City (previously in Boulder, CO). Sequel Venture Partners and First Round Capital also participated in the round. Yieldex won the Amazon Web Services startup challenge in November for its cloud-computing approach to doing inventory analytics.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle data-visualization firm Tableau Software announced its 16th consecutive quarter of record sales, and a host of new customers acquired in the last three months of 2008. Tableau’s new customers include AAA Allied Group, Active Network, Mitel Networks, the University of Texas at El Paso, and U.S. Auto Parts.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

At a time when many tech companies are reducing their payrolls, San Diego’s ParAccel just announced it’s moving into a new headquarters to accommodate its rapid growth. The venture-backed company, which develops business analytics technologies that accelerate database queries, says its workforce has doubled to 60 people over the past year.

“It’s great to be well-funded and in a hot market space,” says Kim Stanick, ParAccel’s vice president of marketing. The company also has operations in Cupertino, CA.

Barry Zane, who is now chief technology officer, founded ParAccel in 2005. Zane, who was also a member of the founding technical team at Netezza, led development of the ParAccel analytic database, which made its official debut in October 2007. Venture funding came from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners, Tao Venture Partners, and Walden International.

ParAccel’s focus on business analytics has certainly been hot, especially in San Diego, which has a growing cluster of software analytics. Xconomy even prepared this useful map of the industry here.

Stanick described ParAccel’s analytic database as a general-purpose product used by a variety of customers, such as Merkle, one of the nation’s largest database marketing agencies. It is available as enterprise software, or as a virtual or packaged appliance that runs on standard computer servers.
After installing a ParAccel database last fall, Stanick says Merkle could generate marketing lists that were more accurate and comprehensive than its previous system, with a 200 percent improvement in processing time.

ParAccel’s growth has been strong enough that it usually has a few standing openings to fill. As Stanick put it, “We’re always looking for good engineers.”

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share: