digiMine Gets VC Boost

Touting customers like Nordstrom and CBS MarketWatch, DigiMine Inc. is expected to announce today that it raised $20.3 million in a Series C round of financing, also snagging Dow Jones & Co. its newest customer.

Mohr, Davidow Ventures led the round for the Bellevue, Wash-based data mining company. New Investors include American Express and the Rolling Thunder Network. Previous DigiMine investor Mayfield Partners also took part in the round. “We do analysis and data mining. Companies use our data improve their sales and marketing efforts,” said Joel Sider, a spokesman for the company. “Dow Jones wants to use our service to understand how customers are using their editorial products. They have a lot of subscribers, and they want to see how they can better meet their needs.”

DigiMine’s latest round of funding will support product development and the growth of DigiMine’s sales and marketing teams in both the U.S. and internationally. Additionally, the company anticipates that this will be its last infusion of venture capital. It expects to hit profitability in 2003 and anticipates an IPO at that time.

“An IPO is a viable option, and ultimately our destination,” Sider said.

Bill Ericson, a general partner a Mohr, Davidow Ventures, which put in around $10 million, agreed that an IPO is in DigiMine’s future. “We always prefer to build successful companies that usually take the IPO route. We believe there is enough talent at DigiMine to do an IPO, but right now the company is very focused on getting to profitability. You never know what the market is going to look like, but ultimately we see IPO for DigiMine.

While most companies are reeling from the poor market conditions, DigiMine’s CEO, Usama Fayyad, thinks that the less than favorable economic environment actually helped DigiMine. “We thought Fortune 100 companies wouldn’t be interested in our services because they could afford to do the research themselves, but with the downturn, those are the companies that wound up looking for us,” said Fayyad.

Perhaps Fayyad is on to something. DigiMine brings in anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million per customer annually. Unlike many other technology companies, DigiMine exceeds its revenues expectations in 2001, especially in the fourth quarter, when the company’s sales quadrupled from the previous quarter.

Additionally, DigiMine exceeds its fund-raising goals. “According to our plans, we only needed about half this round to get profitability because we had about $10 million left over from our last round. The additional money will help us grow more aggressively.”

Source: ipo.com

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