Providence software company Context Media Inc. closed on an $11 million funding
round last week that brings the startup one step closer to maturation.
Dana Lewis, a spokeswoman for the company, said the Series C round of funds would be used for sales and marketing activities, which will include an expansion of the company’s 50-person work force. She also said Context, which has its offices at One Providence Washington Plaza, would continue to be based in Rhode Island.
The round of funding is the stage of financing a startup company is in. Series C is the third round of funding for a company, not including the initial seed capital investment. The usual progression is from startup to first round to mezzanine (a company in a stage somewhere between startup and an initial public offering) to pre-IPO.
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The other avenue for a startup company to take would be to consider being bought out by a larger entity. Mergers and acquisitions of startups happened much more rapidly in the late 1990s when venture capital was flowing freely. Both of Context’s early rounds of financing were for the same amount.
Context is a provider of enterprise content integration software, software that allows all content in a business operation to be accessed and worked with whether it is structured or unstructured.
As an example, in a deal with IBM announced last summer, Context collaborated with the computer giant to integrate Context Media’s Interchange Suite software with IBM’s DB2 content manager portfolio. The partnership made it easier for any company to access digital content stored across IBM’s enterprise.
The merging of such products allows businesses to build a system that collects content from several places and moves the content into a single location for the user. The Interchange Suite can improve productivity and has helped companies utilize the value of time-sensitive digital content assets for accelerated marketing efforts, quicker time-to-market and greater cross-promotional media activities.
Context was founded in 1999 by Dan Harple, a University of Rhode Island graduate who created InSoft before selling it to Netscape in 1996. Harple served as a senior vice president at Netscape before returning to Rhode Island. He serves as Context’s chairman and CEO
“The demand for technology solutions that quickly and easily provides access to digital content assets dispersed throughout organizations is rising,” said Harple in a release. “We are at the forefront of this need and our solutions are already helping some of the world’s largest companies leverage their content assets for competitive advantage. The additional funding support we’ve received will help us accelerate our sales and development efforts and bring new solutions to market more rapidly.”
The company operates in the business-to-business market and has developed solutions for many of the world’s largest companies, including CMP Publishing, Sony, CitiGroup, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Schroeder Publishing. The company also has strategic partnerships with many of the technology industry’s leading companies, including BEA, Sun Microsystems, EMC/Documentum, Oracle, Adobe, Microsoft and BearingPoint.
According to Gartner Inc., a provider of research and analysis on the global IT industry, since the first quarter of 2003 there has been a significant move toward the adoption of content integration technology. Gartner predicted that content integration would be one of the leading drivers behind enterprise acquisition of content management, work flow and enterprise application integration technology through 2007.
Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, a venture capital fund focused on investments in technology companies, led Context’s funding that also included investments from New Enterprise Associates, Adams Capital Management and Shamrock Ventures II. Lewis said some of the companies were also involved in the company’s earlier rounds of funding.
The $11 million round is not the largest deal of the year for Rhode Island though. A venture capital deal that brought in $35 million to North Kingstown-based American Biophysics Corp. was ranked third on a MoneyTree Survey released in May that reported deals completed during the first quarter of 2004. American Biophysics, which manufactures the Mosquito Magnet, an insect abatement trap, secured the financing in February.
