AllThingsD » Draper Fisher Fisher Jurvetson

SugarCRM Raises $33 Million in Round Led by NEA

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:30:21 +0000

Usually when there’s any discussion around customer relationship management software, it inevitably turns to Salesforce.com, which built its reputation and a $22 billion market capitalization around a cloud-based system for keeping track of sales contacts and customers. It also positioned itself as an alternative to Oracle and SAP, which also do CRM. Other players are Microsoft and NetSuite, which offers CRM as part of its larger enterprise resource-planning suite.

But there’s another alternative, called SugarCRM, that has been gaining traction, and which positions itself as an alternative to Salesforce. It’s open source, runs both in the cloud and on-premise, and it has a million end users at 7,000 companies in 192 countries.

Today, SugarCRM announced that it had raised $33 million in equity and debt financing. New Enterprise Associates led the round, and Brooke Seawell, an NEA partner, joined Sugar’s board. Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital joined as new investors, while prior investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Walden International also participated.

The company saw sales increase by 67 percent last year and added 2,700 new customer companies, making SugarCRM, by its count, the third-most popular CRM product in the world.

Mobeam Banks Another $1.5 Million for Mobile Bar Code Technology

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:49 +0000

Mobeam has raised another $1.5 million in capital to work on a solution for point-of-sale systems at retail not being able to read bar codes from coupons on cellphone screens. In October, the company raised $5 million; in December, it inked a high-profile partnership with Procter & Gamble, and now adds new investor DFJ Athena, a Korea-focused venture fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, to the list. Previous investors include Yet2Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Mitsui.

Local Ad Start-Up Yodle Raises $10 Million C Round. What Does That Mean?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:30:09 +0000

Venture capitalists and other investors are still willing to put money into Web/tech/media start-ups. But their terms are getting tougher, for obvious reasons. One start-up founder I talked to last week described his last round of funding, completed in December, as akin to “getting shot in the head.”

Bear that in mind as you read the press release announcing the newest round of funding for Yodle, a New York-based local advertising start-up. The company has brought in new investors in its C round–JAFCO Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth have joined DFJ and Bessemer Venture Partners. That’s good, because under conventional wisdom, the appearance of new money in these things validates the older money’s investments.

But the C round is also smaller than the B round from a year ago–the $10 million round Yodle is announcing is less than the $12 million it trumpeted in the fall of 2008. That bucks the traditional funding order, wherein each round is bigger than the last. So what does that mean?

Impossible to say until we hear more about valuation and deal terms, which I don’t have. Last year, people close to the company were floating a $40 million-plus valuation for the service, which connects mom-and-pop companies with the Web, via Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG) et al.

That’s one of the great untapped sectors of online advertising, so if the Yodle folks can crack it, they deserve as much as they can get, downturn or not. I’ll report back if I get more info on the deal. If you feel like contributing your knowledge you can reach me at peter@allthingsd.com, or via the blind tip box here.