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DEALFLOW DASHBOARD/JUNE 28
B2B: Metal-Pages, 2M GBP ($3.04M) B2C: Qrate.com, $600K Software: Electrotextiles Company Ltd., 2M GBP ($3M) Incubator: Startupfactory, $56.4M New VCs/Angels: Firststage Capital New VC funds: Axxon Capital, $12M People: David Chen's Olympic Venture Dealflow Dish: Celebs at Enterprise Partners
DEAL OF THE DAY: LOUDCLOUD, $120M
As Loudcloud founder Marc Andreessen sees it, keeping up with the software and technology that maintain Web sites is a bit like being a hamster on an unstoppable treadmill. Whether you're a Web-based upstart or a Fortune 500 firm, "you constantly have to hire new people to keep running," he says. "At some point, everyone is going to have to get off the hamster wheel or it will eat the company." That's what Sunnyvale's Loudcloud and its investors are banking on.
The company, which Mr. Andreessen considers "the moral equivalent of a telecom," enables dot-coms, Fortune 500 spin-offs and ASPs (application service providers) to outsource all of their Web site infrastructure and operations. It does so by stringing together all the Web servers, databases, caches, and other technological truck required to run a site. The company charges $10,000 and up, per month, for the service. But Loudcloud's real wits lie in its software, called Opsware. The software runs all the equipment in a highly automated way, enabling the company to guarantee consistent quality of service (QoS) to its customers. Cisco's $5.8 billion acquisition of publicly traded Arrowpoint Communications, a maker of QoS software and switches for Web content and traffic, is one indication of the importance of service quality to businesses. Of course importance creates fertile ground for competition. And Mr. Andreessen has plenty, USWeb/CKS (Nasdaq: USWB) and Viant to name just a few.
Funding: Capital Research Management (lead); Amerindo Investment Advisors; Aurora Technology Funds; Octane Capital Management; Charter Growth Capital; Integral Capital Partners; Benchmark Capital; Angel Investors
Dealflow is reported and written by Karie Atkinson, Richard Byrne Reilly, and Steve Silverman.
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