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,

â€œWhen I joined Cape Clear, I gave a ten-year commitment to really build something large,â€? he said. â€œBuilding a billion dollar company revenue-wise would put Ireland on the map, and we have aspirations of that dimension.â€?

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.