Austin — Software company Pivot3 today closed on $54.6 million in equity and bank financing.
Pivot3 sells software for computing, memory, and storage on a “commodity priced” hardware server— inexpensive Web-based storage as well as computing power to businesses ranging from casinos to correctional departments and aviation authorities. .
Investors included Argonaut Private Equity in Tulsa, OK and Austin-based S3 Ventures.
When I last spoke to Pivot3’s CEO Ron Nash in late 2013, the company had raised about $100 million. Today, he tells me, that number is closer to $200 million. Is an IPO in the works?
“Yeah, but it’s not going to anytime soon with how the market is today,” he says. “Nobody’s IPO’ing now.”
Nash says the company will use the new money to expand its roster of software engineers and sales and marketing staff, as well as to develop new technologies.
The added financial flexibility is especially key as Pivot3 recently completed its acquisition of NexGen Storage, a Louisville, CO computer data storage company. As a result of the merger, Pivot3 now has about 2,000 customers in 53 countries, Nash says.
“We are exploring some joint products that are coming out of both of our former technologies,” Nash says. “We’re putting the companies together.”
In fact, Pivot3 now has a development team double its size before the acquisition. “That’s a real asset in today’s world,” Nash says. “I needed every one of those NexGen people. The acquisition was definitely a way for us to get more talented people.”
