deals, Software, startups
Smartsheet Raises $1.5M From Madrona, Riding Wave of Support from Google Apps Marketplace
Thea Chard 9/17/10
Smartsheet, the Bellevue, WA-based collaborative project management software company, has raised $1.5 million more in a Series C round led by existing investor Madrona Venture Group.
The company, founded in 2005 by local entrepreneur Brent Frei, develops business software that helps companies oversee online project management, manage team-based collaboration, file share, and track outsourced tasks. The system, essentially, takes all of the components that go into different business processes—Excel spreadsheets, e-mails, computer files, to-do lists, discussion threads, customer information, schedules, workflow, etc.—and brings it all into one central management hub.
This latest round of funding brings the company’s financing total close to $7 million. Smartsheet’s last round, worth $1.25 million, was raised in January 2009 from Madrona and Frei himself, who said the money would help the company reach profitability in 2010. The privately-held company doesn’t disclose detailed financial numbers, but it has confirmed that it has started operating in the black.
“That’s the big milestone for us, busting through that cash flow positive,” says chief executive Mark Mader.
The most recent financing keeps Smartsheet on track to pursue its expansion plans, according to Mader. The company has maintained an 11-person staff over the last year, despite seeing its paid customer base nearly triple. And although he would not disclose the exact number of customers beyond being “in the hundreds of thousands” (the company reported having 65,000 registered users in 2008), he did say that its growth over the last year is a strong indicator of the business’s potential in years to come.
“Remarkably we’ve been able to scale the business and stay at that level. And our venture firm loves us because we’re very capital efficient. When you look at that early round, more than tripling the business and keeping the headcount the same is amazing,” he says. “A lot of fast companies send out releases on their traffic and what not, and that’s all fine and well, but I think the mark of paid customers is a more important indicator.”
The additional $1.5 million will be used to further expand the company’s app-making capability. Once those get developed, SmartSheet will continue pushing them through its proven distribution channels, such as the Google Application Marketplace, where it is currently ranked as the No. 1 app. While the Google App Marketplace has been a boon to SmartSheet, the company also has partnerships with other companies like Amazon, VMware, Intuit, and Jive Software, and expects to add Salesforce.com to the list in the coming weeks.
“This leads us to a position where we can be confident and expand,” Mader says. He adds that the company is finally at a point where it can no longer manage its fast growth with such a small staff. He expects to hire as many as five new people over the next six months. “We’re not kidding ourselves—we’ve already started the hiring process,” he says.
Thea Chard is the Assistant Editor for Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail her at tchard@xconomy.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/theachard.
Forget cable TV at school. Your dorm or fraternity likely pipes basic cable to your room, but you don’t want to be stuck in there, watching Gray’s Anatomy every Thursday night. No, you need to be out, enjoying your collegiate experience so take all that media with you. Or, hook something up to your TV that allows you to play back anything you want. That’s how the cool kids do it.
On the go
Your phone
There’s a good chance that your phone can also double as a quality media player. Perhaps all it needs is a large Micro SD card for a bit more storage. But even most feature phones support at least the popular media files while some smartphones can playback nearly everything. You often sacrifice battery life in exchange for the convenience, but it’s also cheaper. Just think of all the beer you could buy not spending $100 on a media player.
SanDisk Sansa Fuze +
There is so much to like about this PMP line. They’re relatively cheap, have expandable memory, FM radio, and supports nearly every media format man has ever created. On the downside, the screen is a tad small for videos, but it should work in a pinch. But one of it’s biggest draws is that it’s not an iDevice. Anything with an Apple logo tends to mysterious disappear during parties and events. They seem to scream “Steal me and sell me for book money!” The Sansa Fuze + doesn’t have that feature.
iPod touch
Word of advice: You can totally con your Mom into buying you a new iPod touch if you promise to have some quality Facetime with her once a week. You can also probably tell her that you need one for a certain app like, say, for your medical terminology class. But you need to guard said iPod touch with your life. Buy one of the sports arm bands and strap it to your inner thigh because people will try to steal it especially if they know it’s one of the fancy new camera models.
In your room
Your computer
The majority of TVs and computers these days have an HDMI jack, making connecting the two rather easy. Just head over to Monoprice and pick up a long cable. This is by far the easiest and least expensive way to playback all of your media on your TV. It isn’t, however, neccesarly the best. HD playback often suffers at the hands of the graphic processor and it’s not at all convenient without a remote or interface designed for a TV. But it works and that’s all that matters.
The WD TV
Geeks love the WD TV. It’s supported by a large development community and plays back everything. Content can either be feed via a network or USB drive. Best of all, it’s small, portable and can be found for under a $100 online.
The Boxee Box
You’re going to have to ask Santa for this one. It doesn’t come out until November, but when it does, it will no doubt be the defacto standard in media streamers. The Boxee software utilizes an Atom platform paired with an Webkit browser running an HTML5 interface to serve up one of the classiest UI’s ever. It connects with all the major and minor video sites from ABC, NBC, Revision3, YouTube, Netflix and all the rest and streams the content right to your TV bypasing all the annoying Internet noise. Oh, and it has a QWERTY remote. Until it drops, though, you can always download the software and put it on your PC that’s connected to your TV anyway.
See the rest of our Back To School 2010 coverage right here!
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Instrument senses magnetic field direction optically.
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Digital Photography Review
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Photokina 2010: Sigma has announced the SD1 digital SLR, which uses a brand new 46Mp 1.5x crop Foveon X3 sensor (4800 x 3200 x 3 layers). Designed as the company's flagship camera, the SD1 has a ...
robert shumake
Eric Boehlert: Fox <b>News</b> Has a Christine O'Donnell Problem
Why? Because now Fox News has to explain to viewers why O'Donnell is ready to serve in the US Senate even though she's not ready to appear on Fox News Sunday. Awkward.
A Compass That Lights The Way - Science <b>News</b>
Instrument senses magnetic field direction optically.
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Digital Photography Review
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Photokina 2010: Sigma has announced the SD1 digital SLR, which uses a brand new 46Mp 1.5x crop Foveon X3 sensor (4800 x 3200 x 3 layers). Designed as the company's flagship camera, the SD1 has a ...
deals, Software, startups
Smartsheet Raises $1.5M From Madrona, Riding Wave of Support from Google Apps Marketplace
Thea Chard 9/17/10
Smartsheet, the Bellevue, WA-based collaborative project management software company, has raised $1.5 million more in a Series C round led by existing investor Madrona Venture Group.
The company, founded in 2005 by local entrepreneur Brent Frei, develops business software that helps companies oversee online project management, manage team-based collaboration, file share, and track outsourced tasks. The system, essentially, takes all of the components that go into different business processes—Excel spreadsheets, e-mails, computer files, to-do lists, discussion threads, customer information, schedules, workflow, etc.—and brings it all into one central management hub.
This latest round of funding brings the company’s financing total close to $7 million. Smartsheet’s last round, worth $1.25 million, was raised in January 2009 from Madrona and Frei himself, who said the money would help the company reach profitability in 2010. The privately-held company doesn’t disclose detailed financial numbers, but it has confirmed that it has started operating in the black.
“That’s the big milestone for us, busting through that cash flow positive,” says chief executive Mark Mader.
The most recent financing keeps Smartsheet on track to pursue its expansion plans, according to Mader. The company has maintained an 11-person staff over the last year, despite seeing its paid customer base nearly triple. And although he would not disclose the exact number of customers beyond being “in the hundreds of thousands” (the company reported having 65,000 registered users in 2008), he did say that its growth over the last year is a strong indicator of the business’s potential in years to come.
“Remarkably we’ve been able to scale the business and stay at that level. And our venture firm loves us because we’re very capital efficient. When you look at that early round, more than tripling the business and keeping the headcount the same is amazing,” he says. “A lot of fast companies send out releases on their traffic and what not, and that’s all fine and well, but I think the mark of paid customers is a more important indicator.”
The additional $1.5 million will be used to further expand the company’s app-making capability. Once those get developed, SmartSheet will continue pushing them through its proven distribution channels, such as the Google Application Marketplace, where it is currently ranked as the No. 1 app. While the Google App Marketplace has been a boon to SmartSheet, the company also has partnerships with other companies like Amazon, VMware, Intuit, and Jive Software, and expects to add Salesforce.com to the list in the coming weeks.
“This leads us to a position where we can be confident and expand,” Mader says. He adds that the company is finally at a point where it can no longer manage its fast growth with such a small staff. He expects to hire as many as five new people over the next six months. “We’re not kidding ourselves—we’ve already started the hiring process,” he says.
Thea Chard is the Assistant Editor for Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail her at tchard@xconomy.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/theachard.
Forget cable TV at school. Your dorm or fraternity likely pipes basic cable to your room, but you don’t want to be stuck in there, watching Gray’s Anatomy every Thursday night. No, you need to be out, enjoying your collegiate experience so take all that media with you. Or, hook something up to your TV that allows you to play back anything you want. That’s how the cool kids do it.
On the go
Your phone
There’s a good chance that your phone can also double as a quality media player. Perhaps all it needs is a large Micro SD card for a bit more storage. But even most feature phones support at least the popular media files while some smartphones can playback nearly everything. You often sacrifice battery life in exchange for the convenience, but it’s also cheaper. Just think of all the beer you could buy not spending $100 on a media player.
SanDisk Sansa Fuze +
There is so much to like about this PMP line. They’re relatively cheap, have expandable memory, FM radio, and supports nearly every media format man has ever created. On the downside, the screen is a tad small for videos, but it should work in a pinch. But one of it’s biggest draws is that it’s not an iDevice. Anything with an Apple logo tends to mysterious disappear during parties and events. They seem to scream “Steal me and sell me for book money!” The Sansa Fuze + doesn’t have that feature.
iPod touch
Word of advice: You can totally con your Mom into buying you a new iPod touch if you promise to have some quality Facetime with her once a week. You can also probably tell her that you need one for a certain app like, say, for your medical terminology class. But you need to guard said iPod touch with your life. Buy one of the sports arm bands and strap it to your inner thigh because people will try to steal it especially if they know it’s one of the fancy new camera models.
In your room
Your computer
The majority of TVs and computers these days have an HDMI jack, making connecting the two rather easy. Just head over to Monoprice and pick up a long cable. This is by far the easiest and least expensive way to playback all of your media on your TV. It isn’t, however, neccesarly the best. HD playback often suffers at the hands of the graphic processor and it’s not at all convenient without a remote or interface designed for a TV. But it works and that’s all that matters.
The WD TV
Geeks love the WD TV. It’s supported by a large development community and plays back everything. Content can either be feed via a network or USB drive. Best of all, it’s small, portable and can be found for under a $100 online.
The Boxee Box
You’re going to have to ask Santa for this one. It doesn’t come out until November, but when it does, it will no doubt be the defacto standard in media streamers. The Boxee software utilizes an Atom platform paired with an Webkit browser running an HTML5 interface to serve up one of the classiest UI’s ever. It connects with all the major and minor video sites from ABC, NBC, Revision3, YouTube, Netflix and all the rest and streams the content right to your TV bypasing all the annoying Internet noise. Oh, and it has a QWERTY remote. Until it drops, though, you can always download the software and put it on your PC that’s connected to your TV anyway.
See the rest of our Back To School 2010 coverage right here!
robert shumake
Eric Boehlert: Fox <b>News</b> Has a Christine O'Donnell Problem
Why? Because now Fox News has to explain to viewers why O'Donnell is ready to serve in the US Senate even though she's not ready to appear on Fox News Sunday. Awkward.
A Compass That Lights The Way - Science <b>News</b>
Instrument senses magnetic field direction optically.
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Digital Photography Review
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Photokina 2010: Sigma has announced the SD1 digital SLR, which uses a brand new 46Mp 1.5x crop Foveon X3 sensor (4800 x 3200 x 3 layers). Designed as the company's flagship camera, the SD1 has a ...
robert shumake
Eric Boehlert: Fox <b>News</b> Has a Christine O'Donnell Problem
Why? Because now Fox News has to explain to viewers why O'Donnell is ready to serve in the US Senate even though she's not ready to appear on Fox News Sunday. Awkward.
A Compass That Lights The Way - Science <b>News</b>
Instrument senses magnetic field direction optically.
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Digital Photography Review
Sigma releases SD1 flagship digital SLR: Photokina 2010: Sigma has announced the SD1 digital SLR, which uses a brand new 46Mp 1.5x crop Foveon X3 sensor (4800 x 3200 x 3 layers). Designed as the company's flagship camera, the SD1 has a ...
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