different ideas. After a few months of market validation and feedback from companies, they decided to focus on the “data pain” of small and medium-size businesses, he says. Cedar then led a $3 million Series A round in Aprigo in March 2008.
Zimmermann knows the IT and data management sector well. He started his career as a software administrator and is a veteran of Hopkinton, MA-based EMC. As he explains, Aprigo sits in the sweet spot between “overkill” products from big companies like Symantec and EMC, which are expensive and focus on large corporate customers, and “underkill” products from existing startups and smaller niche players, which only target pieces of the data security and storage problem.
Aprigo has 15 employees and just started selling its software in the past quarter in a monthly subscription model. It uses a combination of direct sales and “channel partners” who sell IT services to administrators. The company’s customers—Zimmermann says about 1,000 businesses have used its software in some form—cut across a wide range of industries including education, manufacturing, retail, finance, insurance, and high-tech.
In a crowded and competitive market, a major challenge is just establishing the brand and product. “The big thing for us is execution and pushing it out, making it easier for customers to find us,” Zimmermann says. It’s safe to say that being available in the Google marketplace should provide an uptick in sales. But Zimmermann has no doubt the demand is there.
“People care about their data,” he says.
