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Appian takes venture money
Monday, July 21, 2008 by admin
With small tech companies these days, it’s easy to assume they’re VC funded to some degree. Appian, on the other hand, has managed for its first 9 years completely self funded. Today it announced that it’s taken on a $10m investment from VC firm Novak Biddle.
You can check out a lot of the detail in Appian’s own press release but here’s some extra info that was given on an analyst call last week:
- This is a big investment from Novak Biddle – the company normally takes smaller positions in its portfolio companies. There are no other investors involved.
- Ramping up marketing is a big focus for the invesment. Matt Calkins, Appian CEO, said on the call that he wants the company to be one of a couple of pure-play BPM providers leading the market segment. To do this he needs to up the visibility of the company. Appian is doubling its marketing spend as a result.
- Whereas the company used to hire gradually and organically, it’s now able to hire to drive business growth and is already in the process of hiring 15 extra professional services staff.
- Growing the footprint outside the US is a priority. So another use for the funding is to build a network of channel partners in Europe and Asia, by bringing niche application and integration providers to the Appian platform and encouraging them to build and deploy customer solutions on the Appian technology.
As Sandy points out, in these post dot-com days $10m sounds like nothing – the kind of money a VC funded startup might consume without even noticing. But as a 9-year self-funded small company, Appian certainly has the ability to use money wisely.
Posted in BPM