Compiere Inc. Raises $6M in Venture Funding and Relocates Headquarters to Silicon Valley
Leading open source ERP company to expand corporate team and offer increased support for its worldwide partner network
Portland, Oregon – June 20, 2006 – Compiere, Inc., the premier provider of open source business applications, announced that it has secured $6 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a major venture capital firm with more than $6 billion of investments under management. This is the first round of outside funding for Compiere, which was initially funded by its founders in 1999. Compiere intends to use the funds to build out a worldwide infrastructure in order to better support its partner network, which has grown exponentially over the last few years. Additionally, as part of this plan, the company will be relocating its headquarters to Silicon Valley, California.
Jorg Janke, Compiere's founder and CEO, said, "Having hit profitability early in the company's history, we were in a position to fund our growth through internally generated funds. However, the market's demand for our product has outgrown our capability to scale the business accordingly. We concluded that partnering with a world-class venture firm such as NEA was the most sensible and prudent path to ensure continued growth."
Compiere ERP & CRM, the leading open source enterprise resource planning application, is used by small to medium enterprises and large corporations worldwide across a variety of industries including distribution, retail, logistics, manufacturing, and professional services. Compiere is an integrated ERP and CRM solution that generates a seamless 360-degree view of a company, its customers and its vendors. Compiere initially made its open source application available for downloading over the internet in 2001. Since then, the application has been downloaded over a million times.
Compiere is implemented by more than 70 partners worldwide. The Compiere Partner Network consists of consulting firms, systems integrators, application solution providers, and value-added resellers that provide consulting, implementation and customization services to Compiere end users. Compiere, Inc. offers a unique business model in that it does not compete with its partner network through direct sales, but instead fully supports partners by providing development and back-office assistance, detailed up-to-date information, and proactive updates and alerts for its product. Compiere partners consistently praise the product for its completeness, ease of customization and ease of implementation, all at a fraction of the cost and resources associated with proprietary solutions.
Andre Boisvert, Compiere Chairman and Chief Business Development Officer, stated, "Compiere is in a unique position because it has a proven product built on a modern architecture at a time when many proprietary legacy ERP systems are approaching the end of their intended life cycle. When you couple this with the fact that Compiere, as a company and as a product, is built upon the open source business model, the price-performance advantages to utilizing Compiere become quite compelling."
As part of the investment by NEA, two NEA partners have been appointed to Compiere's board of directors: Vladimir Jacimovic and Harry Weller. Commenting on the appointment, Vladimir Jacimovic said, "Both Harry and I are extremely excited about our partnership and the opportunity that lies ahead for Compiere. The company not only has the right product, at the right time, for the replacement market, but it also has the right product offering for the growing small to medium business market place, whether that be domestically or internationally. We are looking forward to working with the Compiere management team to build a truly great company."
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a leading venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs create and build major new enterprises that use technology to improve the way we live, work and play. With $6 billion under management, NEA's experienced management team has invested in over 500 companies, of which more than 150 have gone public and more than 200 have been acquired. NEA has offices in Reston, Virginia, Menlo Park, California and Baltimore, Maryland. For additional information, visit www.nea.com.
About Compiere, Inc.
Compiere, Inc. is the premier provider of open source business management software. The Compiere ERP & CRM solution is used worldwide by small to medium enterprises and large corporations across a variety of industries including retail, logistics and distribution. It is available for use on Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac and UNIX platforms. Founded in 1999, Compiere, Inc. offers commercial backing, support and services to its global network of more than 70 partners. For more information, please go to www.compiere.com.
