MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA January 24, 2002 It may not have been news worthy 12 months ago, but in these economic times, securing investor money for a technology company is no small feat.
The latest company to impress this industry with this accomplishment is bom.com, which offers a web-native solution for collaborative product development built around a bill-of-materials (BOM) framework. The company announced today that it secured $5 million in Series B funding, led by private equity investment firm Otter Capital. In addition, IDEO, an innovation and design firm and a bom.com customer, joined this round as a strategic investor.
"Our ability to raise capital in the current environment illustrates the confidence investors have in bom.com," said Michael Topolovac, chief executive officer and co-founder of bom.com. "It confirms not only the strength of our application but also the overall need for more effective and cost-effective solutions to enable collaborative product development. We will use the funding to expand our sales outreach, strengthen our market presence and maintain an aggressive approach to developing new functionality."
"During difficult economic times, investors need to see proof," said John Pasquesi, managing member of Otter Capital. "With bom.com, the results were irrefutable. Not only has the company architected an elegant, easy-to-use solution for the complex problem of managing and sharing product information- a problem faced by every hardware design and manufacturing business - but it launched that solution on time and on budget. And around that technology, the company has built a solid customer base, a scalable business model and an experienced management team."
Pasquesi has joined the bom.com board of directors as chairman. Before founding Otter Capital, he was managing director of Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm whose investments include Formula One Holdings, Young & Rubicam and NASDAQ, among others.
"In a world of shrinking product development cycles, globally dispersed design teams and outsourced manufacturing, seamless collaboration is a business imperative," said David Strong, chief financial officer of IDEO and general partner in IDEO Ventures. "That is the world IDEO inhabits, and that is why we decided to deploy bom.com across our organization. Any business developing complex products needs a better way to navigate this increasingly demanding world. The opportunity for bom.com is tremendous, and that is why we decided to invest."
IDEO was actively involved in the early development of the bom.com application and recently signed a major deal to license the bom.com software.
