Austin Ventures of Texas announced a partnership last week with Silverback Acquisitions, a value-oriented consolidator of sub-scale enterprise software companies. Silverback was set up by noted Austin entrepreneur Jack McDonald, who serves as Chairman and CEO.
Austin Ventures is the lead investor of an $11.5m seed-funding round for Silverback and has committed a total equity growth-capital investment of up to $50m. Chris Ney, most recently a Trilogy Inc executive, is Silverback’s President and COO and on the founding team. While at Trilogy, Mr Ney was CEO of Trilogy portfolio enterprise software companies Versata, Tenfold and ETI, where he introduced innovative customer support and licensing programs that drove higher customer retention and increased recurring revenues and top-line growth.
Mike Hill, an 18-year finance and acquisitions veteran who served as the Chief Financial Officer of Perficient and executed eight acquisitions while there, is now Silverback’s CFO.
Prior to Silverback, Mr McDonald spent more than a decade as Chairman and CEO of Perficient Inc, an leading IT consulting firm that serves Global 2000 companies. Under Mr McDonald’s leadership, Perficient grew from a start-up with eight employees to a publicly-traded company with a market capitalization of over $500m, in excess of $200m in revenues, more than 1,200 employees and offices throughout the US and in China, India and Eastern Europe. Mr McDonald completed 17 acquisitions while at Perficient and led the company’s IPO. A serial entrepreneur, he won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Central Texas in 2005.
An All Star Team
“This is an all-star team with deep experience and a proven track record in technology acquisitions, finance and operations” said John Thornton, a General Partner at Austin Ventures. “We are very enthusiastic about working with Jack, Chris and Mike to build a differentiated, high-growth software business.”
Silverback will be a high-growth consolidator that makes disciplined acquisitions of financially and operationally-challenged enterprise software businesses and improves their performance through a singular focus on long-term customer success and a lean operating model that emphasizes Internet-enabled partnerships and global sourcing.
“Enterprise software is a $200bn market and there is a tremendous, untapped opportunity to consolidate sub-scale software companies in that space” said McDonald. “Our disciplined acquisition strategy, differentiated operating model, experienced team and strong partners like Austin Ventures make this a great platform for growth and value creation.”
Austin’s relationship with Silverback is part of a stated strategy to partner with talented executives with proven track records to build growth companies in attractive markets. The firm has a dedicated in-house talent function that identifies executives that want a hands-on partner in building their next business.
Austin Ventures
Austin Ventures has worked with talented entrepreneurs to build valuable companies for over 25 years. With $3.9bn under management, Austin Ventures is one of the most active venture capital and growth equity firms in Texas and one of the most established in the USA. With a focus on business services, information services, integrated media, computer and communications hardware and enterprise software, Austin invests at all stages of company development, from $100,000 planned experiments in early stage ideas to $100m investments in expansion rounds, minority recapitalizations and buyouts of middle market growth companies.
Source:http://www.wiredvc.com/texas-software-371acquisition-firm-silverback-launches-on-11-5m/
