Megisto Systems’ birth coincided with apex of the dotcom frenzy in spring 2000, but Gordon Saussy never intended for his Internet infrastructure equipment company to follow the lead of the cash-burning, Foosball-playing, profits-be-damned enterprises that defined and doomed so many misguided dotcommers.
“We were cheapskates,” said Saussy, Megisto’s CEO. “We used to tell people, your offer letter is not a lottery ticket; you better have a passion for building something.'”
Saussy and his cohorts must have gotten through to their new hires, because that building trend continues at Megisto.
The company, a leading developer of carrier-class, mobile Internet infrastructure equipment, is expected to announce today that it has closed a $50 million Series B financing from a top-tier investor syndicate that includes lead backer Norwest Venture Partners and newcomer New Enterprise Associates.
They were joined by Series A players Columbia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Lucent Venture Partners.
“We see the tremendous opportunity of the mobile Internet, and understand the daunting challenges that operators face in delivering it,” said Saussy, who is also the company’s co-founder and president. “But there is a business here and, unquestionably, we have the best platform.”
Megisto’s vision is to solve the key problems of the mobile core network by establishing a highly resilient core ecosystem and delivering a diverse array of revenue-generating services across it.
Matthew Howard, principal at Norwest Venture Partners, and Peter Barris, managing general partner for NEA, will join the company’s board of directors as a result of the financing.
“We are about to enter a period of Moore’s Law for mobile data services and the delivery of these services represents the biggest technology and business discontinuities facing the market today,” Howard said. “[Today], companies must bring together an excellent team, a compelling product and top-of-the-line execution.”
Megisto represents the “only team we’ve seen that has the detailed understanding of both the mobile and Internet business models required to solve the immediate and future business challenges faced by mobile operators,” Barris added.
According to Phil Marshall, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group’s wireless-mobile technology division, in today’s environment, carriers must provide and account for personalized IP services to millions of roaming users while at the same time forming partnerships to meet these services.
To that end, “Megisto Systems is among the very few vendors that understands these requirements and is developing hardware specifically designed to meet them,” he added. –
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