Castile Ventures Marks 10 Years of Backing Market-Leading Companies
Celebration Gathers Portfolio Company Executives and Community
We were recently joined by past and present portfolio companies together with many of our advisors, co-investors, and the broader community to recognize a major milestone: Castile's 10th Anniversary! There was much to celebrate. Not only was it the first time in what seemed like a month that New England saw the sun, but we were able to gather with friends and colleagues from near and far to reminisce on our companies' accomplishments.
We were delighted to share the event with such a broad representation of management team members, both long-standing and recent, including several who have been part of more than one Castile company. We were
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equally happy to see many other individuals who have made a critical contribution to our companies' successes: attorneys who have represented them, accountants and recruiters who have supported them, and bankers who have led strategic transactions for them. We also enjoyed interacting with company advisors and fellow board members, including many of our fellow VCs. It was great to see representatives of organizations such as MassNetComms, MIT, and TiE-Boston that play a vital role in stimulating our local entrepreneurial community.
Long-time Castile advisor and venture partner Mark Ain summed it up well: "Great companies are created by great people, and Castile has been fortunate to be associated with entrepreneurs, technologists, executives and service providers with the vision to innovate and the passion to succeed!"
Building a World Without Wires
Castile companies have been major contributors to the development of high-speed wireless networks. Notable among them is Trapeze Networks which, while part of Castile’s portfolio, grew to become the world’s third largest supplier of WLAN infrastructure with more than 4,000 customers. We are delighted that president and CEO Jim Vogt joined us from California so we could celebrate his company’s successful acquisition last year by Belden, a leader in transmission products.
Sandbridge Technologies represents a different aspect of wireless, developing processors for emerging generations of cell phone handsets. Sandbridge has introduced the world’s first chip for high speed 4th generation (“4G”) cellular services, scheduled to begin commercial operation next year, and recently achieved their own milestone with the announcement of a partnership with Samsung to develop its 4G platform.
Powering the World’s Voice and Data Networks
Several of our companies have been among the leaders of successive generations of the VoIP infrastructure that underlies a growing proportion of the world’s voice communications. Nearly a decade after its successful IPO, Sonus Networks is among the most important New England-based networking companies and a leader in providing VoIP backbone switches to carriers. Every day, Sonus switches handle more than a billion minutes of IP voice traffic in more than 50 countries.
Representing a subsequent phase of VoIP evolution, Brix Networks became the market leader in assuring the service quality of the latest wave of advanced VoIP and video IP services. President and CEO Tom Pincince and his team joined the event to take their bow for their successful 2008 acquisition by EXPO, one of the largest providers of portable test and measurement solutions to the telecommunications industry.
Another important aspect of networking is broadband transport, and a leader in this field is Aurora Networks, led by Guy Sucharczuk. Aurora is now the world's number two supplier of the fiber-to-the-home systems used by cable operators to deliver very high speed voice, data and video services.
Enabling Internet Applications
Just as many of the world’s networks are powered by systems developed by Castile companies, so are many Internet applications and transactions. GeoTrust, founded by Neal Creighton and Chris Bailey, grew to become the world’s second largest provider of Internet security certificates with over 120,000 customers in 150 countries serviced by a partner community of 2,500 resellers and web-hosting providers. GeoTrust was acquired in 2006 by Internet infrastructure service provider VeriSign.
Another successful Internet infrastructure company was Quantiva, an innovator of performance management for web services. Led by CEO Alan Fink, Quantiva was acquired by service management company NetScout in 2005.
Creating New Markets With Disruptive Innovations
Founded by a distinguished team of experts in miniature optics and electronics, Ahura Scientific has developed ultra-compact analytic instruments that are now widely deployed around the globe in numerous homeland security, public safety, pharmaceutical and industrial applications. Chairman and CEO Doug Kahn and founder and president Daryoosh Vakhshoori were on hand to join in our festivities. The company has become a recognized leader in its field with dozens of awards for technology innovation and business acumen.
A more recent addition to the portfolio, North End Technologies (NET), founded by innovators from the video-conferencing and robotics industries, is currently operating in stealth mode to develop a new category of low-cost multi-media solution. The community is hearing enough to know they are poised to make waves, and the Mass High Tech journal recently identified North End in their Start-up Watch segment as one of Five to Follow.
Repeated Wins in Successive Companies
Perhaps the greatest satisfaction from 10 years in venture capital comes from backing the same individuals in several successful ventures. For example, after GeoTrust was acquired, the team launched ChosenSecurity to provide on-demand digital security. ChosenSecurity now has more than 3,500 customers, and has an exclusive contract to protect European pay TV services against piracy. Castile is now pleased to partner with Neal, Chris and their team once again as they grow RatePoint to become a leader in reputation management and customer feedback for small and medium sized-business.
Another CEO we’ve had the pleasure to work with more than once is Jack Sweeney. Early in Castile’s history Jack led Stargus to become a leading supplier of automated management to cable operators. Infrastructure vendor C-COR recognized this market strength and acquired the company in 2004. Not resting long, Jack took the helm at Network Intelligence and led it to become the leader in the then-emerging market for consolidating enterprise data at the core of compliance and information security. Network Intelligence also became number one in its field, and has subsequently become a key element of EMC’s RSA security division.
Building a New Generation of Market Leaders
Today, Castile’s portfolio includes a new generation of companies that are well-placed to lead the next wave of new market opportunities. Two Castile companies taking advantage of the market’s insatiable appetite for wireless communications are Funambol and Agito Networks. To keep the billions of smart phones in sync with their users’ email and contacts, Funambol has created the world’s largest open source program for mobile phones with a community of more than 50,000 developers creating applications for over 1,000 types of handset.
Meanwhile, Agito Networks provides a fixed mobile convergence platform that enables enterprises to integrate their mobile devices to their enterprise networks. Our involvement in VoIP has been continued by Whaleback, which has thousands of small business users for its managed voice services. In the Internet space, PermissionTV has created a video platform that is used by leading media companies, and Enquisite has recently launched a new product that enables digital marketers to capture real-time organic search data to measure the ROI of their search campaigns. Optiant continues to expand the base of blue chip customers using its supply chain software. Innovating in the security arena is Agiliance, which has been recognized by analysts Gartner and Forrester as an early market leader in the rapidly emerging field of IT government, risk, and compliance.
As the above attests, Castile has much to celebrate, and wish to extend our thanks and appreciation to all of you who have supported us and the companies we work with through our first decade. Please stay tuned to the Voyager to hear about our next 10 years!
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