The embargo is over: Six Apart has finally announced from whom they have raised their series B. Surprise, surprise: David Hornik, and August Capital, have put in $10M, as a sole investor. This tells you how much these guys believe in the potential of the company, doing a $10M series B solo is not that common.
I am delighted by the news because I have many friends involved in the company: Reid, Loic, Andrew, and of course, David. I also think that August is the right VC to help this company, which has established itself as the de-facto leading blogging platform, realize its potential. As many of us blogged about, it is critical for promising companies to pick the right VC. This is not a possibility that all entrepreneurs and companies have, but SixApart did have it. I remember this amusing episode at BlogOn where I saw Mena and Ben being schmoozed by many of the VCs who were participating to the conference. That kind of "danse" tells you one thing: there is a funding going on. (I actually remember chatting to David about that fact, and the only thing I got was a big smile - go figure why).
Because August is the sole Series B investor, they will put two partners on the Board: David Hornik, and David Marquardt. That David, a co-founder of August, was also a founder of TVI, and the only VC investor who backed Microsoft (he actually still is on that board - conflict of interest in the making ?). The two David will bring a great mix of experience: deep knowledge of the space (David H is one of the most visible VCs in social media) and track record in building industry leaders. In addition to those two, Andrew Anker, who was a partner at August, recently joined the company as VP of Corporate Development. His role is pivotal: striking partnerships, both technology and channel, that will fuel SixApart's growth outside of their current direct business model.
You can also get interesting insights, both personal and professional, on the process that led to this funding in these posts from Mena and David. Mena has actually posted about a number of key decisions the company had to make: the (saga of) switching from a free to a paid service, the hiring of a CEO, and now picking a VC firm. Useful reference for other entrepreneurs (and refreshing compared to the Google secrecy ;-).
Am I being too nice ? I am a fan of the company, the product, and a number of these executives. That is true. However I think that the company is going to face a number of challenges: managing the growth of their user base, expanding their product line, growing their employee base whilst maintaining their culture, as well as facing increased competition from startups and established players. The blogging/social media is too big a phenomena for new competitors not to emerge. If you look at the past few weeks, every week has seen a funding announcement in social media/publishing space: NewsGator, Flickr, Technorati, SocialText, JotSpot, Pluck, SixApart,... Feedster has announced that they were raising, I would not be too surprised if Bloglines was in the works. And just at the Web 2.0 conference, a number of entrepreneurs are talking about their new RSS-related functionality, each with a different twist, angle or business model. Not even mentioning, what established players are "cooking" (Google, Yahoo, CMS vendors in the enterprise space).
As some of us were talking over breakfast this morning, there is a feeling that we have been there in the past. Let's just hope that the outcome of the story will be different. Not all these companies will make it, but they will help writing a new chapter of the Internet: what has been called here Web 2.0.
Anyway, best of luck to the SixApart crowd, we wish you every success.
Comments