SugarCRM Receives $5.75 Million in Series B Funding
Investment Reflects Rapid Growth of Firm�s Open Source CRM Platform
Cupertino, CA (February 15, 2005) –
SugarCRM Inc. today announced that it has secured $5.75 million in Series B funding for ongoing development of its open source customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The investors are Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that led the companyâEUR(TM)s $2 million Series A financing eight months ago, and Walden International, a global venture capital firm based in San Francisco that led the Series B round.
The new round reflects the rapid growth of the Sugar Suite of CRM applications since their introduction in July 2004. Sugar Open Source Editionâ,,¢ has been downloaded by over 100,000 users to date, while Sugar Professional Editionâ,,¢ has over 100 customers. The products have already been translated into more than 15 languages, and a hosted version of the Professional Edition called Sugar On-Demand is available for a monthly fee with no need for in-house software installation or maintenance.
âEURoeSugarCRM is the first open source company in the applications space as well as the first to present a practical business model with revenue-generating capabilities,âEUR said Mary Coleman, managing director of Walden International. âEURoeThey offer a real alternative to services like salesforce.com with equivalent technology or better, a lower price, the option to use a hosted or installed version, and easy integration with other back-office systems. These are very real benefits that we believe will play a fundamental role in changing the software market in general and the CRM space in particular.âEUR
âEURoeWe believe that commercial open source represents a disruptive shift in the software industry, and SugarCRM is proving us right,âEUR said Josh Stein, an associate at DFJ. âEURoeTraditional software companies might take two years to get to their first couple of customers, but SugarCRM is light years ahead because of the nature of the open source model. We predict that SugarCRM will be a very large company, and it will get there much faster than ever before possible.âEUR
About SugarCRM
SugarCRM provides commercial open source customer relationship management applications for companies of all sizes worldwide. SugarCRM was founded in 2004 by three Silicon Valley CRM professionals with over twenty years of experience spanning marketing, application design and engineering. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California and can be reached by email at contact@sugarcrm.com or by visiting http://www.sugarcrm.com.
Source: SugarCRM