Cape Clear : Only a billon to go then

Cape Clear has broken cover with its latest investment round of USD$15m. The latest partners to invest are InterWest one of the Silicon Valley Sand Hill mob. As Annrai is reported to have said in 2005 in the Sunday Business Post,

So only a billion to go then Annrai :-).

From what I gather on the web and my own sources Cape Clear total investment to date is broken down as follows,

• 2 Million in seed funding from ACT in 2000
• 16 million in Series A funding from Accel and Greylock in 2001
• 10 million in Series B funding from Accel and Greylock 2003
• 5-10 million: A phantom series C round raised as a set of warrants amongst existing investors. It was never press released and their is no mention of it on the net.
• 15 million in a series D round in the last few weeks with InterWest

So we can guess that the total investment is at least USD$48m and may be significantly more.

Thats a lot of money for a bit player in the web services/SOA/ESB market place. Even at a preference multiple of one they would need to make USD$100million in a trade sale before any of the common stock holders see a dime.

Answers on a post card for the last Irish company to make a trade sale exit that netted more than $100m…

Disclosure: I was Director of Engineering at Cape Clear from 2000 to 2003 and I have (common) stock in the company.