When San Diego’s St. Bernard Software announced last week that it was acquiring the assets of Rohnert Park, CA-based Red Condor, CEO Lou Ryan was not available to explain the deal, which was a somewhat-involved transaction.
When I finally caught up with Ryan by telephone, he explained that in addition to buying Red Condor’s e-mail spam-filtering technology, two of Red Condor’s longtime venture investors also made an investment in St. Bernard Software (OTCBB: [[ticker:SBSW]]) and have joined the board. As part of the deal, Menlo Park, CA-based RWI Ventures and Redwood City, CA-based ATA Ventures, along with certain individual investors, put $3 million into St. Bernard for notes that convert to St. Bernard shares, with a $1.10 conversion price. That might seem optimistic, considering that St. Bernard closed at $0.55 a share yesterday, but the stock has basically doubled since the deal was announced a week ago.
Both of the VC partners involved also have experience with networking technology companies, including both optical and wireless networks. ATA Ventures managing director Mike Hodges, who is joining St. Bernard’s board as a non-voting observer, was the interim CEO at Tellium, an optical networking company spun out of Bellcore in 1997 as a joint venture with SAIC and Ortel. RWI co-founder William Baumel, who joins St. Bernard’s board as a regular director, was a founding shareholder and chairman of Optical Solutions, which was
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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