GrowthWorks backs Trigence
Application virtualization software startup Trigence Corp. has closed an $8 million Series B round of funding led by Canadian venture capital firm GrowthWorks Ltd.
The funding for Ottawa-based Trigence came together in less than six months and brings the startup's total capital raised to $17.5 million after two tranches of a Series A for $5.5 million and $4 million.
Business Development Bank of Canada's venture arm BDC Venture Capital of Quebec and VenGrowth Capital Partners of Toronto are existing investors and participated alongside Vancouver, British Columbia-based GrowthWorks.
Whether this is the last round of capital Trigence goes out for will depend largely on how the next 18 months go, according to David Roth, the startup's president and chief executive. He declined to disclose the company's valuation or whether the round was up or down.
"A big portion of that A round was creating the foundation of the technology and the product capabilities and also establishing our early-stage business partnerships," he said.
The company now plans to ramp up sales and marketing efforts and better its technology, and Roth said: "We're in the very beginning of the hockey stick and I think there will be a lot for us to share as we head into the year."
The company, whose technology has been in development since 2003, takes applications and puts them into containers that can be moved on Solaris and Linux operating systems to lessen the need for reinstallation on desktops, for example, or to facilitate their transfer during upgrades. Roth said Trigence's customers include those in the financial services, communications and pharmaceutical industries, as well as some in the government sector with defense systems.
The startup has a relationship with BMC Software Inc., which directly sells Trigence's software, as well as arrangements with Sun Microsystems Inc. and EMC Corp.'s VMware.
According to Timothy Lee, a vice president of investments for GrowthWorks and a new Trigence board member, people peg the virtualization market at nearly $1 billion, but growing at 50%.
Lee said server virtualization currently dominates, but once the market is broadened to application and network virtualization, it has the potential to grow to $10 billion within the next five to 10 years.
"It's the whole vision of on-demand application delivery, doing it securely, doing it effectively — just really leveraging the network we've installed over these many years is this type of containerization that I think is going to facilitate that," he said.
In the near term, Roth said he expected the company to more than double its head count. Trigence has recently added to its management team with a new executive vice president and COO; it also will bolster its sales and support efforts in Europe as well as in North America to head west and grow the customer base. The company has not yet hit profitability, and Roth declined to offer a projected date.
Attorneys from LaBarge Weinstein LLP of Kanata, Ontario, advised Trigence on the deal. GrowthWorks used Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP as investor counsel.
