FatWire Bulks Up With $10M

It’s not often than upstart companies enter the marketplace and offer to go head-to-head with their older, more established competitors. That is, at least if they plan on surviving for any length of time.

So far, though, one company has managed to bend all the rules and survive. Recklessly putting its business model on the line, content management provider FatWire Software recently issued just such a challenge to publicly traded industry heavyweight Vignette Corp.

“We said, we’ll donate $100,000 to charity and challenge you to a devlopment competition,” said Mark Fasciano, FatWire’s president and chief executive. “We would use our technology, they would use theirs. We were willing to do it publicly, because we believed we could offer better return on investment.”

Vignette never answered the challenge, however. The reason, Fasciano believes, is because Vignette knew it couldn’t win.

“One of the things they did great was that they had a very early mover advantage,” he said. “But the downside is, they were the first-generation technology.”

Now, information technology managers want the best equipment, but they only want it if it’s easy on their bottom line. To that end, FatWire offers the best of both worlds.

Hence, it has already signed on 70 customers with household names such as Andersen Corp. and IBM Corp.

IT managers aren’t the only ones who recognize FatWire’s market value. The Mineola, N.Y.-based company recently raked in $10 million from venture capital investors in a Series B deal led by TopSpin Partners LP, the successor fund to the Long Island Venture Fund.

EuclidSR Partners, Wheatley Partners and Newlight Associates also participated in the financing, which the company will use to bolster its sales and marketing initiatives.

FatWire is expected to reach profitability sometime during the first half of next year.

Robyn Kurdek can be contacted at: Robyn.Kurdek@tfn.com