Series B Investment from Top-tier Venture Firms Battery Ventures, Matrix Partners and Charles River Ventures Brings Total Funding to More than $28 Million
Framingham, Mass. - March 11, 2002 - Netezza Corporation today announced that it completed a round of financing from top-tier venture capitalist firms totaling $20 million. Led by Battery Ventures, the series B round includes initial investors Matrix Partners and Charles River Ventures and brings the Company's total funding to more than $28 million.
Netezza has a created a breakthrough platform that transforms slow and expensive business intelligence (BI) activities into agile information. The purpose-built platform can run ad hoc and complex tera-scale queries in a fraction of the time of existing solutions, delivering fast and affordable BI to Fortune 1000 companies.
"For decades, companies have been deploying generic servers, storage and databases to hold growing amounts of information and handle large volumes of transactions. This infrastructure wasn't designed for the timely analysis of terabytes of data," said Jit Saxena, co-founder and CEO of Netezza Corporation. "Our purpose-built platform enables companies to generate the fast, flexible and affordable analysis that they need to increase revenues and generate new business opportunities. Attracting top firms like Battery, Matrix and Charles River Ventures in today's climate provides an enormous endorsement of Netezza's market opportunity, executive team and solution."
Co-founded by Jit Saxena and Foster Hinshaw in 2000, Netezza received more than $8 million in series A funding from Matrix Partners and Charles River Ventures. Saxena is the founder and former CEO of Applix Inc., a leading provider of analytical CRM software. While at Applix, Saxena built the company into a market leader and achieved several years of revenue growth and profitability. In 1994, Saxena took the company public and generated an eight-fold increase in market value.
"Over the past ten years, corporate America has rebuilt their ERP and CRM transaction systems, but managers today still don't have all the information they need to drive informed decisions," said Ollie Curme, general manager, Battery Ventures. "Netezza has a breakthrough product that will unlock that corporate information quickly and easily, without the huge effort and risk of a data warehousing project. They've got an amazing team and a dazzling product that is unleashing the promise of business intelligence."
The Company also announced today that Battery's Ollie Curme has joined Netezza's board of directors, which includes Ted Dintersmith of Charles River Ventures and David Schantz of Matrix.
"In our review of companies, Netezza stood out as an immediate opportunity. The company has solved a fundamental business problem that has plagued businesses for years," said David Schantz, partner, Matrix Partners. "Netezza is in an ideal position to remove many of the business intelligence barriers that prevent organizations from fully capitalizing on the data vital to the growth of their business."
"Companies lose money every day because of the problems associated with getting high-quality and immediate information from the data they collect," said Ted Dintersmith, general partner, Charles River Ventures. "Netezza has cracked the code for a powerful and affordable business intelligence platform."
About Battery Ventures
Battery Ventures is a leading venture capital firm focused on technology investments.
With a team of more than 60 professionals and nearly two decades of success,
Battery has the people, experience, and capital to guide emerging technology
companies to category dominance. Since 1983, the firm has invested worldwide
in more than 130 companies across the communications, software and Internet/e-Business
industries. From its offices in Wellesley, Mass., and San Mateo, Calif., the
partnership manages more than $1.8 billion in committed capital. For more information,
please visit www.battery.com.
About Matrix Partners
Since its inception in 1977, Matrix Partners (www.matrixpartners.com) has been
dedicated to helping outstanding entrepreneurs build industry-leading technology
companies. Matrix focuses on companies that develop cornerstone technologies
of the information revolution and invests in a broad range of sectors including
software, communications equipment, semiconductors, storage, Internet and wireless.
With offices in the two major technology centers -- Boston and Silicon Valley
-- Matrix has developed an exceptionally strong network of contacts and a deep
reservoir of entrepreneurial know-how. Companies that have gone public out of
the Matrix portfolio in the last two years and that Matrix played a founding
role in include ArrowPoint Communications (acquired by Cisco), Blue Martini
Software (Nasdaq: BLUE), SilverStream Software (Nasdaq:SSSW), Sonus Networks
(Nasdaq: SONS) and Sycamore Networks (Nasdaq: SCMR).
About Charles River Ventures
Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures (CRV) is one of the nation's oldest
and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with $2 billion under
management. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their
ideas into the next category leaders in the data communications and software
& services sectors. To build these companies, CRV provides entrepreneurs
with access to a unique combination of financial backing, startup operations
expertise and strategic business services. Over the past 10 years, CRV funds
have been ranked among the industry's top performers. This superior investment
record includes leading companies such as Cascade, Chipcom, CIENA, iBasis, Sonus
Networks, SpeechWorks International and Vignette. CRV has offices in Boston,
MA and Menlo Park, CA. For more information visit www.crv.com.
About Netezza Corporation
Netezza's breakthrough platform enables agile and affordable business intelligence
(BI) at tera-scale. The company's patent-pending, purpose-built BI platform
dramatically increases the real-time intelligence that can be obtained from
data and reduces the costs associated with current BI solutions. Founded in
2000 and based in Framingham, Mass., Netezza is led by an experienced management
team from several leading technology companies. The Company is financed by Battery
Ventures, Matrix Partners and Charles River Ventures. For more information about
Netezza, please visit www.netezza.com.
# # #
Netezza is a trademark or registered trademark of Netezza Corporation in
the U.S. and/or other countries. All rights reserved.