2nd Watch, a leading managed cloud company, has raised $19 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Delta-v Capital with participation from previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Columbia Capital and Top Tier Capital Partners. The new money will be used to meet customer demand for 2nd Watch’s managed cloud services and also for scaling its related cloud enablement and migration services.

Founded in 2010, 2nd Watch was among the first audited AWS Managed Service Provider Partners. The firm has helped some of the world’s biggest brands embrace the cloud, including Crate & Barrel, Condé Nast, Coca-Cola North America, Lenovo, Motorola, SCOR and Yamaha, while managing over 200,000 AWS instances per month across its client base.

2nd Watch has earned AWS Competencies in Financial Services, Enterprise Migration, DevOps, Big Data, Marketing and Commerce, Life Sciences and SharePoint, and was the first cloud-native managed services provider to earn SOC2 compliance. The firm is opening an East Coast Managed Cloud Services Center in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2017.

“As an APN Premier Consulting Partner and AWS Managed Service Provider Partner, 2nd Watch delivers the deep expertise in our products and services that customers greatly value,” says Terry Wise, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, AWS. “The company has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to help large enterprises migrate workloads to AWS, and then support them with the next-generation managed services our customers are looking for.”

“We are excited to invest in 2nd Watch, the leading managed services provider in this very disruptive, large and fast growing market. The company has a proven management team and an impressive and enthusiastic customer base.” said Rand Lewis, Managing Partner, Delta-v Capital. “We are confident that the 2nd Watch team, with market leading proprietary technologies and processes, will continue to be an integral, value-added partner for enterprise customers that are adopting cloud computing.”

“2016 was a very successful year for 2nd Watch,” says Doug Schneider, CEO at 2nd Watch. “We added multiple large-enterprise clients and expanded business with many more of our existing ones. Enterprises continue to accelerate their adoption and leverage of the public cloud on many fronts. They’re telling us that traditional infrastructure solutions and partners are ill-equipped to manage applications and virtual data centers in the public cloud. As companies move in this direction, they require support from partners like 2nd Watch that have experience managing the largest and most sensitive applications and workloads on AWS. The capital infusion will help us grow and support our customers the 2nd Watch way.”

About 2nd Watch

2nd Watch is an AWS Premier Partner providing managed cloud to enterprises. The company’s subject matter experts, software-enabled services and cutting-edge solutions provide companies with tested, proven, and trusted solutions, allowing them to fully leverage the power of the public cloud. 2nd Watch solutions are high performing, robust, increase operational excellence, decrease time to market, accelerate growth and lower risk. Its patent-pending, proprietary tools automate everyday workload management processes for big data analytics, digital marketing, line-of-business and cloud native workloads. 2nd Watch is a new breed of partner which helps enterprises design, deploy and manage cloud solutions and monitors business critical workloads 24×7. 2nd Watch has more than 400 enterprise workloads under its management and more than 100,000 instances in its managed public cloud. The venture-backed company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about 2nd Watch, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 888-317-7920.

###

Media contact:
Kevin Wolf
TGPR
(650) 327-1641
kevin@tgprllc.com

LogRhythm, The Security Intelligence Company, today announced the release of LogRhythm 7.2, a major upgrade to its leading security intelligence and analytics platform. Purpose-built to power the next-generation Security Operations Center (SOC), LogRhythm’s platform is now further optimized to deliver the industry’s most efficient, effective end-to-end threat lifecycle management solution. This release extends LogRhythm’s lead in providing the most accurate security analytics with embedded security automation and orchestration to help customers quickly detect, respond to and neutralize cyberthreats before they result in a material breach.

“LogRhythm is putting customers first by developing features collaboratively with users. The Threat Intelligence Service in LogRhythm 7.2 is more actionable and helpful than 7.1 in surfacing important data for better incident response through security automation and orchestration.”

The risk of a breach is climbing steadily, and cloud and internet of things (IoT) deployments further expand the enterprise attack surface. Enterprise security operations teams recognize that executing end-to-end threat lifecycle management is the only way to effectively manage that risk. However, most are understaffed and overwhelmed, lacking the necessary analytics, automation, and orchestration to stay ahead.

LogRhythm 7.2 addresses these issues by delivering unmatched capabilities in four key areas: scalability; machine data intelligence; user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA); and embedded security automation and orchestration.

“Armed with finite resources to battle a staggering number of possible security threats, CISOs are desperately trying to realize an effective end-to-end threat lifecycle management capability,” said Chris Petersen, CTO and co-founder of LogRhythm. “Whether you support a massive 24×7 global security operations center or a small virtual SOC, LogRhythm 7.2 will amplify your organization’s ability to rapidly detect, investigate, and neutralize threats.”

Large enterprises are already harnessing the power of LogRhythm 7.2. “LogRhythm’s product is soaring to new heights,” said Michael Meline, IT security manager from Kootenai Health. “LogRhythm is putting customers first by developing features collaboratively with users. The Threat Intelligence Service in LogRhythm 7.2 is more actionable and helpful than 7.1 in surfacing important data for better incident response through security automation and orchestration.”

Highlights of the LogRhythm 7.2 security intelligence and analytics platform include:

Greater efficiency, designed for massive environments LogRhythm 7.2 provides up to 200 percent improvement in data processing and indexing performance to help customers cost-efficiently scale, especially in high-volume environments such as those exceeding 100,000 messages per second. What’s more, fully-automated data source onboarding saves countless hours of administration time in large environments.

Industry’s most accurate security analytics supports even more data sources LogRhythm 7.2 extends the depth of the platform’s patented Machine Data Intelligence Fabric™, a feature that automatically extracts contextual meaning from data to enable the most accurate and powerful security analytics. Specifically, LogRhythm 7.2 delivers advanced threat detection capabilities by expanding its industry-leading data schema with more than 20 additional metadata fields. These added fields complement the platform’s industry-leading support for over 785 unique data sources. LogRhythm 7.2 also advances customers’ visibility into cloud-based systems, including AWS, Salesforce, Box and Microsoft Office 365.

Only SIEM provider to deliver “one-stop-shop” for holistic threat detection across user, network, and endpoint-borne threats

LogRhythm 7.2 customers will see accelerated detection and investigation of user-borne risks—such as compromised accounts and insider threats – due to extensive enhancements to the User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA) module. The UEBA module extensions also include new threat detection algorithms, stronger kill-chain corroboration and new real-time dashboards for more targeted threat hunting.

Eliminates costly and inefficient workflow API integrations via embedded Security Automation and Orchestration Security teams will realize improved efficiency and more rapid response to threats thanks to the security automation and orchestration capabilities embedded into the new LogRhythm 7.2 platform. What’s more, this embedded function minimizes total cost of ownership by eliminating the need to buy, integrate and maintain expensive third-party solutions and API integrations. LogRhythm 7.2 delivers extensive workflow and UI enhancements based on real-world customer feedback, such as direct in-workflow access to threat intelligence services. The release also adds 20 new SmartResponse™ actions that provide customers with automated playbooks for optimal incident response.

About LogRhythm

LogRhythm, a leader in security intelligence and analytics, empowers organizations around the globe to rapidly detect, respond to and neutralize damaging cyber threats. The company’s patented award-winning platform uniquely unifies next-generation SIEM, log management, network and endpoint monitoring, user entity and behavior analytics (UEBA), security automation and orchestration and advanced security analytics. In addition to protecting customers from the risks associated with cyber threats, LogRhythm provides unparalleled compliance automation and assurance, and enhanced IT intelligence.

LogRhythm is consistently recognized as a market leader. The company has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s SIEM Magic Quadrant report for five consecutive years, named a ‘Champion’ in Info-Tech Research Group’s 2014-15 SIEM Vendor Landscape report, received SC Labs ‘Recommended’ 5-Star rating for SIEM and UTM for 2016 and earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2015 Global Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Enabling Technology Leadership Award. LogRhythm is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with operations throughout North and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

Contacts

for LogRhythm

Jenny Overell

415-249-6778

Jenny.Overell@finnpartners.com

NSS Labs, Inc., the world’s leading information security research and advisory company, announced today that it has secured $16 million of new equity and bank financing. The financing will support the growth of the NSS Labs suite of services that includes in-depth security product testing, analyst services, and continuous product monitoring through the Cyber Advanced Warning System” (CAWS), a revolutionary cloud-based security and risk management platform.

The round was led by Delta-v Capital with participation from existing investor, LiveOak Venture Partners. As a part of this transaction, David Schaller, Managing Director of Delta-v Capital will join the board, and Dan Williams, Vice President of Delta-v Capital, will be named a board observer. The new investment follows last year’s $7 Million funding by LiveOak Venture Partners and Chevron Technology Ventures to seed development of CAWS for the Texas-based company. The latest round of financing enables NSS to accelerate its go to market strategy, as well as expand the capacity of the CAWS platform to meet customer demand.

“NSS plays a rare and valuable role in the security industry,” said Schaller. “The partners in our firm have made many successful investments in both the information services and security sectors over the past 15 years. Through their CAWS platform, NSS is uniquely positioned at the intersection of these two highly attractive markets. NSS’s wealth of proprietary data brings transparency and accountability to the security industry where product comparability and cyber risk are increasingly difficult to assess and quantify.

“NSS has a strong reputation earned from its many years of investment in becoming the leading independent source for factual information on security threats, products, and cyber risk. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with NSS as they look to realize a higher trajectory of growth and success,” adds Schaller.

“We were early believers and are thrilled to be reaffirming our investment in NSS Labs,” said Venu Shamapant, General Partner of LiveOak Venture Partners. “With rapidly evolving threats and security products, the need for a tool that allows a security organization to quickly assess whether new exploits can attack them and if so whether their existing security can stop the attacks, is critical. NSS has successfully leveraged its stellar reputation as a trusted source for security product assessments by delivering a first-in-class SAAS offering that is giving enterprises visibility on their cyber security risk,” adds Shamapant.

“NSS Labs has been on a rapid growth trajectory, and with this new investment from Delta-v Capital, we are thrilled that we can further accelerate our unique offerings to customers around the world,” said Vikram Phatak, CEO of NSS Labs.

About NSS Labs, Inc.

NSS Labs, Inc. is the global leader in security product testing and advisory services, providing businesses with the objective information, analysis, and tools they need to successfully manage cyber security risk. NSS offers advanced solutions including the Cyber Advanced Warning System™ (CAWS) — a cloud service that continuously captures live attacks being used by threat actors, and tests security products against those attacks in real time. CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, and information security professionals from many of the world’s largest and most demanding enterprises rely on insight from NSS. For more information, visit www.nsslabs.com.

About Delta-v Capital

Delta-v Capital is a leading provider of liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Delta-v was founded with a focus on providing secondary liquidity to management teams, founders, and other investors. Additionally, the firm partners with market leading companies with proven business models to provide the capital required to accelerate profitable growth. Since 2009, Delta-v has made over 20 investments in market leading companies including DrillingInfo, LogRhythm, Cloud Sherpas (sold to Accenture), Borderfree (sold to Pitney Bowes), and Zayo. Delta-v has offices in Dallas, Texas and Boulder, Colorado. Visit www.deltavcapital.com for more information and find them on Twitter @deltavcapital.

About LiveOak Venture Partners

LiveOak Venture Partners is an Austin-based, early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs who use disruptive technologies and business models to challenge the status quo. While many of their investments begin at the seed stage, LiveOak is a full lifecycle investor focused on technology and technology-driven service companies primary based in Texas and the Southwest. For over a decade, the Founders of LiveOak have helped entrepreneurs create industry-leading companies, such as Spatial Wireless (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Navini Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems), LifeSize Technologies (acquired by Logitech) and Mavenir Systems. Visit www.liveoakvp.com for more information.

How the public sector can benefit from private investments

By Rand Lewis

Every investor is looking for a positive return, but the best investments yield results even beyond the balance sheet. The idea of a virtuous circle of business says that every party involved – from the investors to the customers to the community – benefits in some way. Such is the story of Boulder-based Zayo, and the virtuous circle fueled by a team of seasoned executives and investors that have taken an idea for broadband networking and created prosperity farther afield.

If a circle can have a starting point, it may be found around 2007, when Dan Caruso and a team of entrepreneurs created a company now named Zayo that was designed to meet the ever-increasing needs for bandwidth. Mobile communications, streaming media, telemedicine, immersive gaming – all of these technological advancements require pipelines over which data can flow freely and quickly. To meet these needs, Zayo has built an incredible network of 7.7 million fiber miles.

In the nine years since its founding, Zayo has become a $1.5 billion revenue leader in global communications infrastructure, which includes the high-performance network that now reaches 350 markets in 37 countries, 57 data centers in North America and Europe and cloud and managed infrastructure services. Today, Zayo employs more than 3,000 associates, with 600 located in Colorado – a number that’s doubled over the past couple of years.

This type of growth might be surprising to some, but not to Zayo’s early investors who saw the potential for the company — and the community. One of its early backers was Colorado-based Centennial Ventures which counts the Public Employees’ Retirement Association of Colorado (PERA) as one of its largest investors. As a fiduciary for its members, PERA is obligated to invest $43 billion in trust fund assets wherever it believes it can generate the greatest return while managing risk. Colorado statutes also allow for preferential consideration of Colorado investments under sound investment policy. Zayo was one of those Colorado-based opportunities where PERA was able to meet its dual goals of serving its members while also investing in the state.

PERA invested $6 million in venture capital firms who in turn invested in Zayo. PERA’s initial investment returned more than 10 times that amount to the PERA trusts, and these returns were reinvested to support the retirements of Colorado’s public employees. Such a high return is welcome although not common and PERA’s diversified portfolio seeks to earn strong returns over many decades.

In 2014, Zayo had its Initial Public Offering and proved to be the largest single return of value from a Colorado-based company to Centennial Ventures in the 35-year history of the investment firm.

This virtuous circle touches more than just its investors and benefits more than the retirement savings of more than 500,000 of Colorado’s current and former public employees. Since its founding, Zayo has made investments in the community by supporting organizations that support education and diversity. Through their work with Greenhouse Scholars, Zayo is helping to provide mentorship and support to disadvantaged college students. The company also supports Denver School of Science & Technology, a public charter school.

Zayo is an example of the hundreds of innovative Colorado technology companies created through early-stage venture capital and supported through maturation by the local investment community. It also illustrates a virtuous cycle of investing: from public pension funds to private venture firms to emerging technology companies that create enormous value for all concerned, including employees, customers, investors and the community.

High-paying Colorado jobs are created, and the ecosystem of high-growth technology companies attracts other tech companies. These companies and their employees give back to their community in a myriad of ways, shaping the state’s next generation of leaders.

GTCR, a leading private equity firm, announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lytx, Inc. (“Lytx” or the “Company”). Lytx (formerly known as DriveCam) is the leading provider of video telematics that help commercial and public sector fleets improve driver behavior and reduce collisions and collision-related expenses.

GTCR will partner with CEO Brandon Nixon and the current management team as they continue to grow and develop the Company’s customer base and service offerings. The Company was founded in 1998 and pioneered the video-based driver safety industry. Lytx is headquartered in San Diego, California.

Lytx serves more than 1,400 commercial and government fleet customers worldwide, including some of the largest commercial fleets in the world. The Company enables its clients to realize significant return on investment by lowering operating and insurance costs, while achieving greater efficiency, safety and compliance.

“Brandon and his team have built an exceptional business that repeatedly delivers strong and quantifiable returns on investment to its customers,” said GTCR Managing Director Phil Canfield. “We are excited to be partnering with them for their next chapter of growth.”

“Video telematics – the category we created nearly two decades ago – has so much potential to deliver substantial cost savings to commercial and public fleets, and make our roadways safer,” said Mr. Nixon. “We have a vision for expanding our breadth of video telematics services and GTCR is the perfect partner to see us through this phase of our long-term growth strategy.”

Mark Anderson, Managing Director at GTCR, added: “The acquisition of Lytx is a great example of leveraging GTCR’s expertise in investing in companies with hard-to-replicate data and highly valuable workflow applications. This transaction also highlights GTCR’s continued enthusiasm for investing in market-leading companies with substantial whitespace opportunities.”

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Evercore served as financial advisor to GTCR, Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal counsel and PricewaterhouseCoopers served as accounting advisor. Rothschild served as financial advisor to Lytx and Ropes & Gray LLP provided legal counsel.

Founded in 2002, ExteNet Systems is the leading independent provider of distributed networks (DNS) enabling outdoor and indoor wireless connectivity. ExteNet designs, builds, owns, and operates distributed networks for use by wireless carriers and venue owners in key strategic markets. Using distributed antenna systems (DAS), small cells, Wi-Fi, and other technologies, ExteNet deploys networks to enhance wireless data coverage and capacity across the US. The recapitalization will enable ExteNet to continue pursuing strategic deployment of outdoor and indoor distributed networks.

ExteNet announced the completion of the $1.4B recap on November 17th with participation by Delta-v Capital, Digital Bridge Holdings, Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, and Goldman Sachs. As a part of the recap, David Schaller will be re-joining the board.

Delta-v Capital is a leading provider of liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Delta-v has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit www.deltavcapital.com and find us on Twitter @deltavcapital.

In November, Delta-v Capital acquired a minority equity position in Wikia, the world’s largest network of user-generated content focused on media, pop culture, and entertainment. Founded in 2006 by the creator of Wikipedia, Wikia is a network of over 330,000 fan-authored and moderated communities that focus on seven distinct content verticals: movies, TV, comics, games, music, lifestyles, and books.

A Quantcast Top 20 site, Wikia generates 140M monthly unique visitors and over 2 billion page views globally, with more than 40% of traffic coming exclusively from mobile visits. The company has more than 200 employees worldwide and is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Cologne, Tokyo, and Poznan, Poland.

Delta-v Capital is a leading provider of liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Delta-v has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit www.deltavcapital.com and find us on Twitter @deltavcapital.

Accenture is doubling down on its cloud services arm through the acquisition of Cloud Sherpas.

Cloud Sherpas itself has been getting bigger over the last few years, namely through acquisitions of its own such as CloudTrigger and a merger with cloud computing integrator Global One.

The Atlanta, Ga.-based company has especially strong ties to Google Apps and Salesforce.com CRM cloud delivery operations on top of a multi-million dollar investment in ServiceNow’s IT service management business practice.

Cloud Sherpas employs more than 1,100 professionals across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Accenture plans to fold the Cloud Sherpas brand in for delivering more consulting, delivery and management services around cloud, app and infrastructure strategies and deployments.

The newly-minted Accenture Cloud First Applications team will be primarily focused on consulting for cloud integrations for Google, NetSuite, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday, among others.

Announced at the start of Salesforce’s cloud extravaganza Dreamforce on Tuesday, financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

LenderLive, a Denver-based, end-to-end mortgage services provider, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Walz Group LLC (“WALZ”), a leading provider of regulatory compliance solutions, full-cycle critical document fulfillment and Certified Mail® Automation. As a result of the transaction, WALZ will be a stand-alone division of LenderLive, operating under its existing WALZ brand. The current WALZ management team will remain in place, led by founder and president, Rod Walz.

“Rod and his team have built a world-class operation focused on critical communications, compliance, printing and Certified Mail solutions,” stated Rick Seehausen, chief executive officer of LenderLive. “They have also developed an impressive array of patented, proprietary technology, and we are confident that WALZ will be a highly-beneficial addition to the LenderLive platform.”

Founded in 1983, WALZ specializes in solving the array of complex compliance requirements for the consumer financial services industry and providing technology to automate critical correspondence delivery through Certified Mail. The company has a deep understanding of the ever-evolving legal and regulatory requirements to properly deliver notices of default, loss mitigation and other servicing-related borrower correspondence. The company currently serves six of the top 10 mortgage servicers, four of the top 10 vehicle finance companies and more than a quarter of the Fortune 100 corporations. WALZ’ primary services include:

Compliance solutions that include monitoring, reporting, comprehensive review and implementation of legislative and regulatory changes at the state and federal level.

Compliance operationalized throughout the entire process of preparation, production and fulfillment of critical communications.

Certified Mail Automation that provides easy-to-use technology and forms to manage the entire mailing and returns process.

“We chose LenderLive and Aquiline Capital Partners for their tremendous experience in mortgage and financial services; their ability to invest in our product and service offerings; and their shared focus on delivering exceptional client service and value,” stated Walz. “They will provide us with strategic and financial guidance, expanded resources and technology, as well as increased partnership opportunities.”

The acquisition will result in a uniquely comprehensive set of end-to-end services and products combining compliance, data management, back-office technologies, critical document management and fulfillment for highly regulated industries. LenderLive has also identified immediate synergies between LenderLive’s GuardianDocs™ business line and WALZ in the areas of loss mitigation and default services, and using the WALZ solutions in mortgage origination.

“The combined capabilities of GuardianDocs and WALZ will provide elegant solutions to today’s complex life-of-loan challenges,” Seehausen noted.

No other terms of the transaction were announced.

About Walz Group LLC

Walz Group is the leading provider of regulatory compliance solutions, critical document management and USPS® Certified Mail for over 3,000 of the nation’s premier financial institutions, mortgage servicers, vehicle finance companies, foreclosure attorneys/trustees, law firms, insurance companies and other highly regulated industries facing stringent and ever-changing compliance requirements. From small businesses to Fortune 100 companies, WALZ provides a comprehensive suite of tools, compliance advisory services and critical document management that allows customers to remain compliant while retaining flexibility, confidentiality and control over sensitive data and documents. Walz Group is based in Temecula, California with satellite facilities in San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, please visit: www.walzgroup.com.

About LenderLive

LenderLive is a domestic-based mortgage services provider, and a portfolio company of Aquiline Capital Partners LLC, www.aquiline-llc.com. Through its six service offerings – outsource services, correspondent lending, loan servicing, document services, settlement services and due diligence – LenderLive offers the scale, experience, and security to support its clients’ origination, servicing and loan purchase operations. From large-scale, centralized operations centers, the company provides services to financial institutions of all sizes on a national basis. With tens of millions of transactions processed through its expansive service offering, LenderLive offers the vision, expertise and innovation on which financial institutions can rely. For more information about the company and its services please visit www.lenderlive.com.

RockYou is a cross-platform media company with the world’s largest in-game video advertising platform. On May 15th, Delta-v acquired a minority equity position from Ryzing.

RockYou acquires once popular but sunsetting social games and extends the profitable life of the games through a hybrid monetization model consisting of both digital goods and the world’s largest in-game video advertising platform. RockYou currently has over 25 owned and operated titles on a variety of platforms including Facebook, web, and mobile. RockYou’s video network generates more than 1B video impressions per month with over 92M US monthly unique viewers.

Delta-v Capital is a leading provider of liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Delta-v has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit www.deltavcapital.com and find us on Twitter @deltavcapital.

Gaming and advertising company RockYou has acquired mobile ad network PlayHaven from startup studio Science Inc.

PlayHaven actually changed hands last fall, when Science bought it from Upsight, the company created from the merger of PlayHaven and Kontagent. By acquiring a mobile ad network, CEO Lisa Marino said RockYou can do a better job of making money from mobile games like Kitchen Scramble and Words of Wonder, and it’s also laying the “foundation” for further expansion into mobile.

“We need a way to augment our mobile ad monetization — the solutions we have today didn’t get us where we needed to be,” Marino said.

She also said PlayHaven’s “brand-centric” approach is a good fit with the work that RockYou has already been doing with video advertising. The PlayHaven network already serves ads to 18,000 games and 250 million users each month.

RockYou has actually been around since 2005, but in recent years, its focus has shifted toward buying and monetizing existing games, rather than developing new ones. So the company is usually looking to buy new titles, but Marino said these kinds of “strategic” deals, which are supposed to “bend the curve more aggressively,” will be more rare.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The entire PlayHaven team has joined RockYou, Marino said.

As for why Science CEO Mike Jones was willing to part with PlayHaven so soon after buying it, he said that as his team explored ways to grow the company, it decided that PlayHaven works best when “paired with a great network of games.” Jones suggested that just as content business started buying up ad networks in the early days of the web, “The mobile space is going to be very similar.”

Cradlepoint is the global leader in 4G LTE networking solutions for distributed enterprises. Delta-v invested alongside Sorenson Capital and The CAPROCK Group in the $48 million growth equity financing.

Cradlepoint’s cloud-managed 4G LTE wireless networking solutions have empowered thousands of distributed and mobile enterprises to create secure, scalable networks that provide essential connectivity without putting the corporate network or assets at risk. The company’s solutions are deployed, managed and supported by Cradlepoint’s innovative and industry-leading Enterprise Cloud Manager (ECM) platform that is purpose-built for the distinctive characteristics of the WWAN. Cradlepoint has over 1,000,000 successful deployments with many of the most well-known brands in the world. The company’s solutions provide the industry’s most secure and reliable 4G/LTE WWAN solutions for business continuity, application specific or parallel networks, transportation and M2M/IoT applications.

Delta-v Capital is a leading provider of liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Delta-v has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit www.deltavcapital.com and find us on Twitter @deltavcapital.

Colorado telecom Zayo Group Holdings is now a public, $5 billion company, thanks to a massive IPO the Boulder-based company pulled off on Friday morning.

Zayo (NYSE: ZAYO) initially priced the deal below its expectations—it sold shares to investors at $19 apiece, well below the range of $21 to $24 the company projected last week. But by mid-morning, after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange, the company’s shares had jumped about 16 percent. They were trading around $22 per share, giving the company a market capitalization of more than $5 billion as of 12:30 MT.

The net value of the initial public offering for the company and its investors was $400 million, according to an SEC filing. They sold a combined 21.05 million shares.

Zayo sold just more than 16 million shares; existing investors sold an additional 5 million. The roughly 21.05 million combined shares at $19 apiece adds up to around $400 million in gross proceeds. After subtracting discounts due to underwriters and other expenses, the company expects to haul in approximately $281.8 million, the filing said. That number could increase, however, if Zayo’s underwriters exercise an option to buy another 3 million shares.

The company and its investors originally planned to sell 28.9 million shares total when it proposed a price range on Oct. 6. Zayo aimed to sell 11.1 million shares, while investors planned to sell 17.8 million. At the projected midpoint of $22.50 per share, they would have raised a total of $650 million.

Zayo has lost money since its founding in 2007, and those losses have grown significantly in the past couple of years as the company spent heavily on infrastructure and corporate acquisitions. Over its history, Zayo has shelled out nearly $4 billion to buy 32 companies.

In its most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30, Zayo booked $1.12 billion in revenue, but suffered a $179 million net loss. Its debts totaled $3.3 billion at that point.

Zayo said in its IPO prospectus it expects the losses to continue for several years.

Like many telecom infrastructure providers, Zayo hopes to make a return on its heavy up-front investments by collecting service fees for many years from companies that need to access its network. Wireless providers, finance firms, Internet companies, healthcare establishments, and government agencies are major parts of Zayo’s client portfolio.

Zayo’s growth was the result of an aggressive strategy that often targeted struggling telecom providers such as 360networks, which Zayo bought in 2011 for $317.9 million. Zayo’s largest acquisition was AboveNet, which it bought in 2012 for $2.21 billion.

The acquisitions along with Zayo’s own construction have created an 81,000-route mile network that reaches nearly than 320 markets in the U.S. and Europe. There are 37 datacenters and more than 15,000 buildings on Zayo’s network.

Zayo executives were not available for interviews Friday morning. CEO Dan Caruso had this to say in a statement:

“We are excited to begin this next chapter in the history of Zayo, and this significant milestone can be attributed to our company’s hard-working leaders and employees. As a public company, Zayo Group will continue to focus on a simple mission—to deliver the bandwidth infrastructure needed to power our modern, connected world.”

Kony Secures $50M Round

Kony, Inc., the leading enterprise mobility company, today announced that it has raised $50 million in financing. New investor SoftBank Capital, a venture capital firm affiliated with SoftBank Corp., a leading telecommunications and media corporation, led the round that included increased investment by existing investors – Insight Venture Partners, Telstra Ventures, and Georgian Partners – and new funding from Delta-v and Hamilton Lane.

“We are thrilled to add SoftBank Capital to our family of strategic investors. SoftBank’s financial strength, global resources, and strong presence in the Asia Pacific region will bring invaluable contributions to Kony’s aggressive agenda for global growth and market leadership in enterprise mobility,” said Thomas E. Hogan, chief executive officer, Kony, Inc. “We are equally pleased Insight Venture Partners will co-lead this round. As one of the industry’s preeminent investment firms and Kony’s anchor investor, the added commitment from Insight is further validation of Kony’s rapid ascension as a leader in the exploding market for mobile applications.”

Borderfree is the market leader in international cross-border ecommerce solutions, operating a technology and services platform that the world’s most iconic brands rely on to expand globally and transact with more than two billion potential customers in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide.

Borderfree priced its initial public offering on March 20th at $16.00 per share, the top end of its planned price range. The company raised $80 million of gross proceeds in the offering.

Delta-v Capital is a leading liquidity and growth capital solutions provider for private technology companies and their shareholders.

Cloud Sherpas has been selected for the UK government G-cloud iv initiative. This will enable Cloud Sherpas to help more UK government agencies transition to and use cloud-based business software. Cloud Sherpas has been selected for the G-cloud iv Specialist Cloud Services category.

G-cloud was founded three years ago as part of the UK government’s ICT strategy. Public sector organizations can procure cloud software and services directly through the CloudStore, which today includes over 13,000 services from 1,183 suppliers in categories such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service and Specialist Cloud Services. According to a G-Cloud blog post from mid October, the G-Cloud Store had processed over 50 million GBP in sales, one of the highest monthly marks to date.

A global cloud advisory and technology services firm, Cloud Sherpas has experienced tremendous growth in the UK over the past year. The company, which offers a range of services built around enterprise cloud software products from salesforce.com, Google and ServiceNow, announced in September that it had over 70 full-time employees in the UK and planned to double that number within 12 months. Cloud Sherpas has contracts with dozens of UK enterprise clients. Selection for the G-cloud iv framework will enable the firm to grow its UK public sector business.

“Cloud Sherpas is very excited to have achieved this prestigious recognition and to expand our relationships with UK government agencies,” said Colin Robinson, VP Consulting at Cloud Sherpas. “There is a growing realization that cloud technologies can be leveraged effectively by government, and our experience with government agencies already in UK, Australia, and US has demonstrated how these technologies can be rapidly deployed. Participation within the G-cloud iv framework will make it simpler for government agencies to work with Cloud Sherpas.”

Borderfree, a market leader in international cross-border ecommerce solutions, today announced it ranked 112 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America.

Technology Fast 500 award winners were selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2008 to 2012.

Borderfree Chief Executive Officer Michael DeSimone credits strong global demand for American brands and retailers and Borderfree’s powerful attributes to help those brands and retailers reach international consumers online as reasons for the company’s growth. DeSimone said, “We are thrilled to be recognized by Deloitte as a fast-growing innovator. International cross-border ecommerce presents a large opportunity for U.S. brands and retailers, and Borderfree’s comprehensive cross-border ecommerce solution provides a scalable platform that enables those brands and retailers to reach global consumers.”

“The 2013 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 companies are exemplary cases of those spurring growth in a tough market through innovation,” said Eric Openshaw, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and U.S. technology, media and telecommunications leader. “This year’s list is a who’s who of companies behind the most exciting and innovative products and services in the technology space. We congratulate the Fast 500 companies and look forward to what they do next.”

“The fastest growing companies in the US are drivers of constant innovation and operate with the agility to stay ahead of a quickly evolving marketplace, and software, biotech/pharma and internet companies continue to be at the forefront,” added James Atwell, national managing partner of the Emerging Growth Company practice, Deloitte Services LP. “The companies excelling in these sectors have a startup mentality that allows them to be nimble and adapt quickly, which is why they consistently lead the list of fast-growing companies each year.”

Overall, 2013 Technology Fast 500™ companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 137 percent to 208,897 percent from 2008 to 2012, with an average growth of 2,600 percent.

About Borderfree

New York City-based Borderfree is a market leader in international cross-border ecommerce solutions, operating a technology and services platform that the world’s most iconic brands rely on to expand globally and transact with customers in more than 100 countries and territories and more than 60 currencies worldwide. Borderfree manages all aspects of international online retailing including: localized pricing and payment processing, landed cost calculation, customs clearance and brokerage, fraud management, logistics orchestration, and customer-experience parity. For more information, visit www.borderfree.com.

About Deloitte’s 2013 Technology Fast 500™

Technology Fast 500, conducted by Deloitte LLP, provides a ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies – both public and private – in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2008 to 2012.

In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least $50,000 USD or CD, and current-year operating revenues of at least $5 million USD or CD. Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of five years, and be headquartered within North America.

Chegg, a start-up focused on textbook rentals and academic services, priced its initial public offering on Tuesday at $12.50 a share, exceeding expectations.

At that price, the eight-year-old Chegg will have raised $187.5 million. The I.P.O. will also value the company at nearly $1.1 billion.

It will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CHGG.

Chegg is the one of the first Silicon Valley companies to go public in the wake of Twitter‘s market debut last week, a closely watched event whose success has spurred many deal makers to consider the next big tech I.P.O.

Related Links

Chegg press release

Founded in 2005, Chegg focuses primarily on renting textbooks for a semester at a time, with 180,000 titles in its catalog. But the company is building its electronic services, which it sees as its future. It offers more than 100,000 electronic textbooks and has rolled out offerings like helping high school students find colleges and scholarships.

In the prospectus, the company says it reaches about 30 percent of all college students in the country and 40 percent of college-bound high school seniors.

Chegg said it earned $22.7 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, for the nine months that ended Sept. 30, a metric that excludes certain costs like stock-based compensation. That is up nearly fourfold from results in the period a year earlier.

Using generally accepted accounting principles, the company’s loss narrowed 12 percent, to $50.4 million.

Still, a number of big players are betting that Chegg’s future will be bright. Among its stockholders are Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Insight Venture Partners.

Most of those investors aren’t selling their shares, and the bulk of the I.P.O.’s proceeds will go toward building the company. But Aayush Phumbhra, one of Chegg’s co-founders, will pare down his stake by about 23 percent, to nearly two million shares.

Chegg’s offering was led by JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

Biomet Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Lanx, Inc.

Biomet, Inc., a global leader in the manufacture of musculoskeletal and biotechnology products, announced today that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Lanx, Inc., a full service spine company and a leader in minimally invasive techniques and technologies.

The acquisition would expand Biomet Spine’s technology portfolio through the addition of innovative products currently offered by Lanx, including the Timberline® Lateral Approach Fusion System, and the Aspen® Minimally Invasive Fusion System. These products are complementary to Biomet Spine’s comprehensive offering of products, including the Lineum® OCT Spine System, MaxAn® Anterior Cervical Plate System, Cellentra™ VCBM and the Polaris™ Translation™ Screw System.

The boards of directors of both Biomet and Lanx have approved the transaction. The acquisition is expected to close on or before November 29, 2013.

Jeff Binder, Biomet President and CEO, stated, “This is an exciting opportunity for Biomet to improve its competitiveness in the spine market by leveraging the best aspects of each company and adding strategically important technologies to our product portfolio. We look forward to welcoming the talented Lanx team members and distributors to Biomet and working together to build our spine business.” Dan Gladney, CEO of Lanx, Inc., stated, “Biomet Spine is the ideal home for the talent and technologies that Lanx has worked so hard to develop. The combination of these companies and their products will be a powerful force in the spine market of the future.”

Adam Johnson, President of Biomet Spine, Bone Healing & Microfixation, commented, “The agreement to acquire Lanx is a key step in the fulfillment of our strategic plan. The resulting increase in scale, expansion of our product portfolio and infusion of talent will accelerate our efforts to be the partner of choice in spine for distributor partners, hospitals and the spine surgeons we serve.” For further information on Biomet Spine products, please visit http://www.biomet.com/spine.

About Biomet

Biomet, Inc. (www.biomet.com) and its subsidiaries design, manufacture and market products used primarily by musculoskeletal medical specialists in both surgical and non-surgical therapy. Biomet’s product portfolio encompasses large joint reconstructive products, including orthopedic joint replacement devices, and bone cements and accessories; sports medicine, extremities and trauma products, including internal and external orthopedic fixation devices; spine and bone healing products, including spine hardware, spinal stimulation devices, and orthobiologics, as well as electrical bone growth stimulators; dental reconstructive products; and other products, including microfixation products and autologous therapies. Headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, Biomet and its subsidiaries currently distribute products in approximately 90 countries.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Those statements are often indicated by the use of words such as “will,” “intend,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” “plan” and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to, among others, the following factors: the ability of the Company to successfully integrate the acquisition of Lanx; the Company’s ability to retain existing Lanx independent sales agents for its products; and other factors set forth in the Company’s filings with the SEC, including the Company’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Although the Company believes that the assumptions on which the forward-looking statements contained herein are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions could prove to be inaccurate given the inherent uncertainties as to the occurrence or non-occurrence of future events. There can be no assurance as to the accuracy of forward-looking statements contained in this press release. The inclusion of a forward-looking statement herein should not be regarded as a representation by the Company that the Company’s objectives will be achieved. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date on which they were made.

Biomet, Inc. Investor Relations: Barb Goslee, 574-372-1514 barb.goslee@biomet.com or Media Relations: Bill Kolter, 574-372-1535 bill.kolter@biomet.com

The U.S. is extracting oil and gas from previously inaccessible places, moving away from its dependency on foreign sources of fuel. That’s a trend that has led Insight Venture Partners to make its largest single-deal investment to date. The firm acquired a controlling stake in Drilling Info Inc., a company that provides data and analysis services to oil and gas exploration companies. The deal totaled $165 million, of which Insight provided the majority. The rest came from Battery Ventures and Eastern Advisors Private Fund.

“We’ve done a number of investments in data businesses,” said Deven Parekh, a managing director at Insight Venture Partners, which invested out of its seventh fund.

Another portfolio company, he said, eVestment Alliance, has a similar business model, offering data and analytics to subscribers, but to the financial rather than energy industry. The strategy that Insight used after investing in that company is similar to what it plans for Drilling Info, said Parekh: use the capital to grow geographically and in terms of product offers, by making acquisitions, as well as by investing internally.

The deal valued Austin, Texas-based Drilling Info at between $200 million and $300 million, according to Allen Gilmer, chairman and chief executive of the company.

“We really benefited greatly by this boom of unconventional resources here in the U.S.,” Gilmer said. Cheaper methods of extracting oil and gas from shale rock formations led to a rapid growth of such production in the U.S., with one trillion cubic feet of natural gas extracted from shale in 2006, growing to 4.8 trillion cubic feet or 23% of all natural gas production in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The company has been profitable for the past five to six years, said Gilmer. Its growing revenue is now in the tens of millions of dollars, he said, declining to be more specific.

Part of the $165 million went to buy out existing individual and small private equity investors including Delta-v Capital. Some investors had been in the company for more than a dozen years. Drilling Info was founded by oil and gas executives in 1999.

With the new funds, the company will make acquisitions, add new data to its database, and expand geographically. It already launched an international strategy. Drilling Info offers yearly subscriptions that range from $1,400 to $1 million to customers. It now has more than 2,700 accounts. Customers receive information about land titles, leases, well completion and production data, and other data that help customers make decisions about where to drill and which companies to acquire, according to Gilmer.

It has a vast data collection operation that in one case involves transcribing phone numbers from government agencies. “There’s a lot of typing going on, a lot of paper handling. We remove a lot of drudgery” from the customer’s hands, said Gilmer.

The company is also gleaning new information from statistics it gathers. Unlike with traditional extraction methods, where a well would produce basically the same amount of oil and gas no matter who drilled it, there is a big variation in unconventional or shale exploration, said Gilmer. “We have found that there’s a differential between the best operators and the worst that can be as high as 50% or 60%.”

Knowing that helps with two things. It allows the company to actually figure out what are the best practices of the best operators that allows them to extract more oil and gas from the same place. It also allows customers to go back to wells that were left by previous drillers and find that with a different approach and technology, these can become economic. “All of a sudden we are able to look for unrecognized jewels based off of areas where people went in early and didn’t know what they were doing,” said Gilmer.

Gilmer said Insight Venture has an internal business consulting group that’s available to portfolio companies and that helps them make decisions. Parekh, of Insight Venture, also mentioned that he brought in Battery Ventures because that firm has been looking at the oil and gas industry for a while and had interesting ideas about an acquisition strategy that Drilling Info may pursue. Eastern Advisors, meanwhile, is a smaller fund but it’s limited partners are oil and gas executives, which might also help Drilling Info, said Parekh.

The company is now changing its board, said the CEO. Insight will have two representatives, and Parekh and another executive of the company will be on the board. The company will look to fill another seat with someone from either the technology or energy fields, said the CEO. http://www.drillinginfo.com