? PALO ALTO, CA and LONDON — Crescendo Ventures today announced six new appointments within its Research Group. With the addition of these team members, Crescendo Ventures is one of the largest team of investment professionals focused on communications and Internet infrastructure and services. Jeff Yu, Christopher Chu, Shiv Puri and Andy Brooks join Crescendo’s team in the U.S., while Edouard Lamy and Thibaut Large complete the team in Europe.
? SALT LAKE CITY — Talk2 Technology Inc., the voice-enabled infrastructure company, has completed a $43 million venture capital round with investments from Smart Technology Ventures (Los Angeles), New Media Venture Partners (Salt Lake City), Bluevector (Palo Alto, Ca.), Dominion Ventures (Menlo Park, Ca.), SunAmerica Investments (Los Angeles), Thomas Weisel Partners (San Francisco) and Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq:ORCL). This round brings Talk2?s total funding to $52 million. Hewlett-Packard (Nasdaq:HWP) is also an equity investor in Talk2.In conjunction with the financing, Talk2 has added Smart Technology Ventures Managing Director Joe Marks, New Media Venture Partners CEO Scott McKinley, and Bluevector Managing Partner Joe Josephson to its Board of Directors.
? SEATTLE ? NewWorld Commerce, a Seattle-based provider of e-marketing campaign generation and management solutions, today announced that it has closed a $5.6-million first round of financing with eVerger, which focuses on providing early stage equity and management expertise to companies in the e-marketing sector. eVerger was established in April 2000 by Aegis Group, a leading communications and marketing consultancy, and Warburg Pincus, the global private equity partnership.NewWorld Commerce will use this new capital to expand its global marketing and distribution capabilities and fuel overall growth. Its staff, which numbered 22 at the beginning of this year, now stands at 42, and is expected to reach 100 by the end of this year.
? NEW YORK – Metapa, an infrastructure services provider that manages the distribution of digital media, today announced that it has closed a $15 million first round of financing led by Wit SoundView Ventures, Impact Venture Partners, and Primedia Ventures. Metapa has also received investments from executives at leading infrastructure companies such as Digital Island/Sandpiper, Exodus, iBeam, Microsoft and RealNames. The funding will be used to support various initiatives including sales, marketing, product development and the general availability of its services set for early first quarter, 2001.
? NEW YORK — Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. todayannounced the formation of the Mezzanine Capital Group with the recruitmentof a team from First Dominion Capital, LLC. Led by John Sabre, seniormanaging director, the team includes managing director Alex Bolen, who,along with Sabre, was a founder of First Dominion; E.G. Morse, vicepresident; and Dave Orth, associate. At their prior firm, the teamcompleted an array of principal transactions including underwriting seniorand mezzanine debt securities and investing equity in leveragedtransactions.
? HOPKINTON, MA — VelQuest Corp., a developer of electronic processmanagement and compliance technology to increase productivity and assure regulatory compliance in pharmaceutical developmentlaboratories, today announced a $9.2 million equity financing. The financing, which included participation by several majorinvestment firms, was led by MedEquity Investors, LLC and Chase Capital Partners. Additional investors included BancBostonVentures, GE Capital Commercial Finance’s Healthcare Group, and an associate of North Bay Associates. MedEquity Investors, LLC is a Wellesley, Massachusetts based private equity firm focused on providing expansion capital toemerging healthcare-related companies. Chase Capital Partners is one of the largest global private equity firms with over $20billion in assets under management, making it a leading investor in the life science sector.
? HOUSTON — SalvageSale.com, the leading independent online marketplace for the more than $50 billion claims recovery and commercial salvage market, announced the completion of approximately $17 million in second round equity financing from a group of financial and strategic investors. The group includes lead investor Securitas Ventures, in which Swiss Re is a limited partner; Merrill Lynch Ventures; and American Re-Insurance Company, a member of the Munich Re Group.
? SAN FRANCISCO — Comedy World (www.comedyworld.com), an entertainment network that produces and broadcasts live talk radio programming, announced it has secured $20.5 MM in series B financing. The financing was led by New York firm Moore Capital Management, Inc., and included Silicon Valley venture capital firm Attractor, who led Comedy World’s series A funding in January, 2000. Comedy World will use the new capital to fund aggressive growth goals, including developing new content distribution models. A portion of the funds will be used for marketing and sales activities to secure and implement terrestrial radio, television and cable syndication opportunities. Comedy World recently announced a distribution deal with Sirius Satellite Radio Network and partnered with Burly Bear Network, the premier media and marketing company dedicated to the college audience, which currently reaches more than 560 universities. The deals position Comedy World across multiple distribution platforms and enable the Company to distribute its content to a broad young adult audience.
? SUNNYVALE, CA — Virtual Silicon Technology, Inc. today announced it has accepted over $15M in a second round of funding from several leading high technology venture capital firms. Jointly leading the Series B equity round are Information Technology Ventures of Palo Alto, CA, and Walden International Investment Group of San Francisco, CA. Other investors included Band of Angels Fund, L.P., EDB Investments of Singapore, Hotung Group, Landmark Capital, Libon Capital Management Ltd., Monet Capital, Sunrise Capital and Sunsino Ventures Group. Virtual Silicon will use these new funds to drive new product development, enhance its design automation infrastructure, and expand the company’s customer support organization and new web-based delivery system.
? SAN FRANCISCO — Trapezo, developer of the first Web-based platform designed to fully manage the distribution of dynamic content, promotions, merchandise and related business rules between partners, today announced $12 million in funding led by SOFTBANK Venture Capital. Athena Technology Ventures also participated in the third rounding financing. Trapezo will use the funding for ongoing product development, infrastructure build-out, marketing, and strategic initiatives. Heidi Roizen, managing director at SOFTBANK Venture Capital and Ryan McIntyre, a venture partner at SOFTBANK Venture Capital and co-founder of Excite, will join Trapezo’s board of directors.
? WELLESLEY, MA — Battery Ventures announced today that John Abraham and Cornel Faucher will join the firm as venture partners effective immediately. Mr. Abraham will focus on new investments in the Internet, software and e-Business sectors. Mr. Faucher will be dedicated to recruiting technologists and executives for Battery’s growing list of portfolio companies. John Abraham brings to Battery Ventures more than 25 years of experience inhigh technology investing, executive management and product development. Mr. Abraham has held several critical executive positions including president and CEO of Add-Vision, Inc., CEO of Condor Technology and senior vice president of engineering at Boole & Babbage (NASDAQ: BOOL). He also served as a consultant and later as executive vice president at Compuware (NASDAQ: CPWR), where he worked as the company’s senior merger and acquisitions executive and successfully completed a dozen transactions totaling nearly $400 million. Cornel Faucher will serve as the venture partner dedicated to recruitment. As co-founder of the retained executive search firm, Lexington Associates, he originated over 40 new clients ranging from Fortune 100 to venture-backed startups and placed executive level talent in the telecom, networking, Internet, software and e-Business sectors. Previously, Mr. Faucher served as vice president of the network systems division of PictureTel Corp.
? TOKYO — The Private Equity division of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (Asia) Limited today announced the launch of its Japan Technology Fund. DrKB anticipates raising approximately US$125 million for the Fund. DrKB?s parent company, Dresdner Bank AG, is investing US$25 million in order to facilitate the launch of the Fund, demonstrating its commitment to DrKB?s investment banking activities in Japan. The Fund will now be marketed to potential investors. It is expected that the average size of first investments from the Fund in private companies will be approximately US$5 million. This is the first Japan-specific venture capital fund to be launched by a major European financial institution with a team based in Tokyo. The Fund will be administered by a multinational team of professionals, led by Dirk van Daele, Regional Head of Private Equity for DrKB in Asia-Pacific. The team was established in March 2000 as part of DrKB?s Private Equity initiative in Japan.
? ANDOVER, MA — CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq:CMGI), a leading global Internet operating and development company, in response to inquiries from the investment community, today stated that it currently has no plans to merge or consolidate other companies within its infrastructure and enabling technologies segment into NaviSite, Inc. (Nasdaq:NAVI). NaviSite, a majority-owned operating company founded by CMGI in 1997, is a leading provider of outsourced Web hosting and application services for companies conducting mission-critical business on the Internet.
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