Business.com Secures New Round of Financing; Growth Potential of Business Search Drives $10 Million Investment from Benchmark Capital.SANTA MONICA Santa Monica (săn`tə mŏn`ĭkə), city (1990 pop. 86,905), Los Angeles co., S Calif., on Santa Monica Bay; inc. 1886. Tourism and retailing are important, and the city has motion-picture, biotechnology, and software industries. , Calif. -- Business.com Business.com is a business-related Internet search engine and web directory. Business.com, Inc. is based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 1999 by Jake Winebaum (previously chairman of the Walt Disney Internet Group) and Sky Dayton (founder of Earthlink). (www.business.com), the search engine designed and organized exclusively for business, today announced the closure of a new round of financing. Benchmark Capital Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups, including eBay. In 1995, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999 and resulted in one of Silicon , a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, has invested $10 million in Business.com. This new round of funding will enable Business.com to invest in technology infrastructure, product development, and sales and marketing to meet the growing market demand for its vertical business search capabilities. Business.com joins the impressive list of Benchmark Capital investments that includes eBay, Red Hat Software, Handspring hand·spring n. A gymnastic feat in which the body is flipped completely forward or backward from an upright position, landing first on the hands and then on the feet. and Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR) is an information technology company based in Sunnyvale, California and founded in 1996. The company designs and sells Internet Protocol network products and services. . The Venture firm has more than $2 billion in committed capital. Business.com was built from the ground up with an exclusive focus on fulfilling the search needs of business professionals. Through its proprietary taxonomy taxonomy: see classification. taxonomy In biology, the classification of organisms into a hierarchy of groupings, from the general to the particular, that reflect evolutionary and usually morphological relationships: kingdom, phylum, class, order, , business interpretation of search terms, and comprehensive directory structure, it has been able to deliver a markedly different search experience for business professionals than general search engines do. "Business.com was founded in 1999 on the concept that the information needs of business professionals are different from those of consumers," said Jake JAKE Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment Winebaum, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. and founder of Business.com. "We've focused solely on this large and valuable market segment for the last five years, fine-tuning our service and laying the foundation for what's become a strong, profitable, and fast-growing business. Benchmark's investment now allows us to accelerate our product development and expand our sales and marketing efforts." Business.com has not just survived in a sector where many of its earlier competitors have perished, but has continued to grow steadily and profitably. This growth is evident in the compounded annual revenue growth rate of over 150% over the past 4 years coupled with profitability and positive cash flow for the past 18 months. "Having surveyed the business search space, we recognized Business.com as the established leader. Its vast distribution network and consistently positive feedback from advertisers is a testament to its ability to deliver high quality leads," said William Gurley, partner, Benchmark Capital. "With its exclusive focus on business search and directory, Business.com has built a self-sustaining and profitable business in a market that we believe is currently underserved. We see this investment as an opportunity to further leverage the company's technology, early leadership position and solid management team to fully realize its market potential." About Business.com Business.com is the search engine designed and organized strictly for business. It provides professionals easy access to business products, services, companies, news and other business information to help them get their jobs done more efficiently. Founded in 1999 by eCompanies, Business.com was originally funded by major strategic investors including Pearson, Reed Business Information Reed Business Information is a large business publisher in the United States, United Kingdom, continental Europe, Australia and Asia. It is a division of Reed Elsevier. In 2005, Reed Business Information started the Quill Awards, a literary award broadcast on NBC. , and McGraw Hill. Still privately-held, Business.com added Benchmark Capital as a preferred stockholder in 2004. Today, Business.com serves the needs of more than three million business searchers each month across a wide array of industries and job functions. Business.com reaches another 32 million through its distribution network which includes partners such as Forbes.com, Inc.com, FastCompany, and Internet Internet Publicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world. It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the .com. With a proprietary taxonomy and classification system consisting of over 65,000 business categories, the company is a leader in the next generation of search. By categorizing business results in an intuitive order and filtering out unrelated consumer content, Business.com is able to anticipate the needs of professionals and allows them to easily locate relevant business information. For more information, please visit www.business.com. About Benchmark Founded in 1995, Benchmark Capital is a venture firm that's based on the principles of teamwork (product, software, tool) Teamwork - A SASD tool from Sterling Software, formerly CADRE Technologies, which supports the Shlaer/Mellor Object-Oriented method and the Yourdon-DeMarco, Hatley-Pirbhai, Constantine and Buhr notations. and an intense dedication to building technology companies of lasting value. We focus on providing superior service to entrepreneurs through a unique, team-oriented partnership in which every partner is equal in terms of both contribution and compensation. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion