Torleif's War Story: A hot company in a cool segment
Companies within Enterprise Software have been out of flavor among VCs for a while, and has clearly lost much of its attention to more "hot segments" within CleanTech, Social Networking, Web applications, etc. The space is viewed as mature and overcrowded, and is by most investors considered yesterdays news.
How I love that!
Northzone has always believed in a segment pragmatic and bottom-up approach in our investment strategy, and never relied on a "follow the crowd mentality". Yes, Enterprise Software sounds a bit boring these days, and it is hard to believe that newcomers can make a big difference in this highly competitive area. But there was something with Nimsoft that grabbed (and kept!) our attention, and made us work hard to get a seat at the table.
Nimsoft had been growing organically - profitably - since its founding in 1998. Indeed, the company remained independent of external funding until Q1 2007, when the company obtained its first round of $10 million in venture capital funding from Northzone and JMI Equity. Since then, Nimsoft has continued to break new ground in its mission of proving well architected monitoring solutions for IT performance and availability monitoring solutions.
Nimsoft provides enterprise-class software that proactively monitors and analyzes the performance of the IT infrastructure and business applications businesses. Nimsoft reduces the cost of monitoring while improving visibility into IT performance and highlighting its contribution to the business. The company supports both physical and virtual environments, and take advantage of the market's dissatisfaction with systems management offerings from the "Big 4", longstanding market leaders (HP, IBM, BMC, CA).
In 2008, Inc. magazine ranked Nimsoft as the 36th Fastest Growing Software Company with a 534-percent revenue growth over a three-year period. The company's growth demonstrates Nimsoft's great product portfolio, its established "die-hard" sales culture, and its dedication to customer satisfaction.
The company's momentum can mainly be attributed to the CEO Gary Read and the Norwegian founders, who together have managed to build an outstanding growth machine; and this in a segment few thought attractive due to well established industry dynamics.
Today, Nimsoft is headquartered in Redwood, CA, and has more than 800 customers in 30 countries, including some of the leading brand name companies and managed service providers in the world.
