EXCLUSIVE REPORT ATLANTA – Vertical Acuity, a company that sells technology to track product performance across hundreds of Web sites, has raised a bridge round of $150,000 from its current investors.
Founded in November 2007, Vertical Acuity has raised more than $1 million to date.
The company’s software-as-a-service Brand 360° platform allows marketers to understand product performance across hundreds of Web sites, letting marketers know who’s looking at their products, the search terms they use to get there, which pages are most effective, and how frequently they’re accessed.
Although the company has initially focused on the music and entertainment industries, it plans to move into additional verticals, such as automotive makes and models, gaming, and consumer electronics.
Vertical Acuity was created on the premise that the Internet is moving from a page view model to an object, or subject, orientation – breaking down the performance of a web site into the most granular level possible. It combines Web analytics, market research, and buzz monitoring into what it calls “semantic analytics.”
The company’s Vertical Acuity Focus is a targeting engine that allows Web sites and advertisers to target and optimize both content and ad campaigns against any artist, album, or track monitor the brand as it proliferates on the Internet, resulting in better allocation of marketing and advertising spend, the company says.
Gregg Freishtat, executive chair, who has over 17 years of experience in venture management and venture investing including the founding of three successful start-ups, tells TechJournal South he may take on a more active executive role in the company going foward and thinks it will be positioned to raise a larger institutional round of capital when the economy improves.
“This was a planned bridge round,” Freishtat says. He says the company’s current investors, Kinetic Ventures and angel investors influential in the Atlanta tech community such as Sig Mosley and the Imlays, have been supportive. “We would expect full participation in a traditional A round.”
Right now, Freishtat says, “We feel it’s important to pick your spot when you go out to raise money. Fewer folks are investing and you only get one shot.” He says the company chose to raise more internal money to put it in the “best possible position” over seeking the larger institutional round now.
He says the five-employee company may hire one additional person but adds, “There is not a good return on investment in rapid burn in this environment.” His experience with his previous venture-backed companies has taught him that “It’s better to show restraint and patience.”
He says keeping Vertical Acuity’s head count down and invested capital modest can result in a greater diversity of exit options in the future, noting, “I think a lot of people don’t realize that the fundamental metrics of valuations and investing in the Internet has changed over the last five years, I think forever. So our goal is to keep capital down to the $3 million to $5 million required to build this to a profitable large company.”
In 2001, Freishtat founded Proficient Systems and served as chairman and CEO until the sale of Proficient to LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) in June of 2006.
Freishtat was also the founder and CEO of VerticalOne Corp., the first provider of web-based account aggregation services. VerticalOne was acquired by S1 Corporation (Nasdaq-SONE) in November 1999.
Following a larger round he says Vertical Acutity may add from 10 to 15 people in the first two quarters of 2010.
Online: www.verticalacuity.com
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