Capital Chaos

 Teneros (Mountain View, CA) has raised a staggering amount of money to make sure your email never goes down.  The company which had previously secured $44.5M over 3 rounds just pulled in another $40M led by Advanced Equities with participation from previous investors Goldman Sachs, Sevin Rosen Funds, New Enterprise Associates and Star Ventures.

Teneros believes, like many of us do, that we cant be without email at any time. Their business is focused on selling a product called Application Continuity Appliance (ACA) which will start working when your companies email (MS Exchange) goes down.  This will ensure that you have uninterrupted email even if the company’s network goes down. 

Since most larger corporations have all types of redundancy systems in place, Teneros gears their application towards smaller to mid-size firms who want the security of knowing their email systems are safe without having to make the investment of fail-over email servers.

The company was co-founded by Steve Lewis who was actually in the MLM world where he was the initial COO for Pharmanex (a NuSkin co) - a very interesting company with some even more interesting stories attached to some of its founders.  Steve does have a strong advisory board around him which should bode well for Teneros’ continued success

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 Sevin Rosen Funds (Dallas TX) is an early stage (and follow on) investor that has been around for 25 years.  These guys are very interested in technology related companies and ones that are not afraid to buck trends.  Their main focus is in the areas of Internet, Media, Software & Services, Technology and Communications Infrastructure, Life Sciences, Materials and Energy Innovations.

Because these guys have been around the block for a while, they have a very keen sense as to what an early stage company needs in terms of resources - and not just capital.  They are very hands-on about helping with things like corporate identity, marketing and marketing materials, strategy and planning, HR etc. 

These guys have a fairly good reputation and as we have stated before, more seasoned firms have slightly different processes and expectations.  Being around for so long sometimes alters the perspective of the investors as they have been pitched endlessly - seen some rise and many fail.  The one criticism heard about Sevin Rosen is that they have been pretty quiet lately in terms of making any deals.  Maybe they are waiting for the “right fit” but as of this posting, it seems the firm isnt doing much investing - maybe the partners will though?

Try and reach out to John Jaggers (jvj@srfunds.com ) - Software and Information Services - or William Paiva (wpaiva@srfunds.com ) healthcare.

Contact:

Texas
13455 Noel Road, Suite 1670
Two Galleria Tower
Dallas, TX 75240
Telephone: 972.702.1100

California
421 Kipling Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 326-0707