SAN FRANCISCO, July 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Deem, a leading cloud and mobile commerce company, delivering Commerce-as-a-Service (CaaS) to a large and diverse ecosystem of customers, merchants and partners enabling them to lower costs, increase revenue and deepen customer loyalty announced today that it has completed its recapitalization financing. PointGuard Ventures and leading mutual fund investors led the round with Stern Aegis Ventures, Keating Capital and Deem's CEO also participating.
"Today's announcement marks the culmination of a comprehensive and transformational operational restructuring and a return to innovation and high-growth within our core business. It also brings to an end a nearly six year perfect storm within the financial services sector for our company in which off-contract and extraordinary high levels of custom software development projects with corporate investors resulted in unsustainably high operating expenses and major distractions from our core," said Patrick Grady, Founder and CEO of Deem.
"As we decoupled from these banks throughout 2012 and 2013, we slashed operating expenses by 50%, grew revenue in our core business, raised gross margins, introduced new market-leading products and entered into strategic partnerships with market leaders in business, consumer, mobile and travel services," added Grady.
"Deem has always had the vision, assets and potential to become one of the most important cloud companies in the market. It's great to see Patrick and the company unburdened from years of non-core distractions and the proof of the renewed focus is in the data," said long-time investor Fred Harman, Managing Partner at Oak Investments.
"We are absolutely thrilled to invest in this round. Patrick has been one of the true visionaries in technology and this is a company that helped to pioneer SaaS, SOA, location-based services and more disruptive innovations," said Krish Panu, founding Managing Director of PointGuard Ventures. "A fateful decision to partner with banks beginning in 2008 led to a company with a bifurcated mission and compromised financials. The decoupling from these banks has returned the company to one of the most innovative in the industry." Pete Thomas, a founding Managing Director of PointGuard Ventures will be joining the Deem Board of Directors.
"When we were given the opportunity to put together an investment group to back Patrick and the team, we took it immediately. I've known Patrick for twenty years and am honored to be a shareholder in such an innovative and disruptive company," said Adam Stern, CEO of SternAegis Ventures and Head of Private Equity Banking at Aegis Capital Corp.
About Deem
Deem is a leading cloud and mobile commerce company, delivering Commerce-as-a-Service (CaaS) to a large and diverse ecosystem of customers, merchants and partners enabling them to lower costs, increase revenue and deepen customer loyalty.
Businesses saving money with Deem include SMBs and Fortune 500 multinationals. Merchants selling on Deem include local and national consumer and business brands. Distribution partners include market leaders in business, consumer, mobile and travel services.
www.deem.com
About PointGuard Ventures
PointGuard Ventures, founded by Krish Panu and Pete Thomas, both Silicon Valley venture capital veterans with 35 years of venture and operating experience, invests in dynamic new technology companies to create new market opportunities or to solve problems in existing markets more cost effectively. Their venture experience spans over 50 startups, 12 IPO's, and many successful M &A transactions during that period of time. PointGuard's new fund will invest in companies that combine software, semiconductors, networking, and hardware to provide "technology convergence" solutions to many of today's markets including Mobile e-Commerce, Cloud Computing, Greentech, Point-of-Care medical, Education, and applied Data Analytics. The fund strategy is to invest in a mix of companies in need of Series A & B funding and in select later stage investments that are based in the US with the potential for early global market entry.
www.pointguardventures.com
Kristina Taylor 650.303.5379
