Atmail has secured AUS$ 2M from Starfish Ventures, which will be used to drive product development, expand the technical team, and increase its US, Asia and European focus.
Atmail, an Australian enterprise email and web communication company, today announced that it has secured AUS$2 million (US$ 2.08 million) investment from Starfish Ventures. Atmail develops fixed and mobile email messaging and collaboration solutions. Some of their products include Atmail Cloud Services, Atmail Webmail, Atmail Email Server, and Atmail Email Server Appliance. The company currently has more than 4,500 customers worldwide. Putting that into perspective, Atmail currently manages email for more than 15 million users.
The founder also shares about their founding story and shares more details on their use of cash in their recent blog post.
From a small garage in the backyard into a multi-national company with small (single user) to large (million user installs) clients installs around the world, Atmail has grown a lot over 14 years. Starting small with bootstrapped funds has allowed Atmail to always run as a cash positive business. Staff growth has been limited by income from products sales – while hiring the best has allowed us to build an amazing product on limited resources – we’ve always wanted to jump ahead in the game.
Over the last year Atmail has been working with Starfish Ventures in Australia to formalise an investment deal with the venture captital firm. Today we are very pleased to announce that Starfish has invested an initial $2M in Atmail. Starfish’s capital commitment will allow Atmail to break-free from the bootstrap “income before expansion” limitations and delve into new opportunities with more creative freedom beyond our tight team.
This increase of capital for Atmail will be invested back into our email product development and expanded global marketing. While Atmail is built on a solid, dependable core there has always been a growing list of innovative new features that the team has been wanting to develop but limited developer resources have often made this a slow process. From today we are looking for a bunch talented developers keen to push email, the internet’s “killer app”, to the next level.
Starfish will be mentoring Atmail to help handle increased growth both in Australia, the US and the rest of the world as we seek to not only build a business where talented developers live but also to better support our client base around-the-clock. Starfish will also work with Atmail to build-up our software as a service (SaaS) offering, Atmail Cloud and make this online email offering a real challenger to hosted email services from brand names like Google and Microsoft.
Read on for the full press release.
Press Release
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20th November, 2012 – PEREGIAN BEACH, QLD – Atmail, the Australian based enterprise email and web communication company, today announced it has secured $2.0M investment from Starfish Ventures to drive product development, expand the technical team, and increase its US, Asia and European focus.
Atmail’s proprietary email product is used by over 40 million paid mailboxes, and 4,500 customers worldwide, Globally, Atmail’s products are used by FedEx, GlaxoSmithKline, NASA and Virgin Atlantic in the US, Australian ISPs iiNet, Netspace, AAPT, Westnet, Transact, and Internode, and Malaysia’s Yes 4G
network.
In October, Atmail successfully launched its Unified Communications Plus product on Yes 4G, allowing users to make and receive phone calls through a webmail like interface directly in the browser. Branded Yes Life for Web, the UC platform provides customers with a single phone number to be used across all devices, meaning incoming communications (voice, text, email) are synchronised and instantly responded to from any device (mobile phone, tablets, or any desktop computer with a connected web browser), freeing users from communication medium overload.
Ben Duncan, CEO and founder of Atmail said, “The funding from Starfish allows us to grow our team of talented developers which means bringing our ideas on messaging to market faster. While Atmail already has a great install-base in the US and Australia, we’ll increase our focus on the US, Europe and Asia, and rolling out our unified communication product to these regions. Having worked with many Aussie start-ups and taking them to the world stage, we see Starfish’s experience integral to helping us achieve this goal.”
With more UC rollouts coming and Atmail’s recent launch into the SaaS model with Atmail Cloud, the business is forging ahead with new opportunities as email options continue to evolve and the sector becomes increasingly competitive.
Anthony Glenning, Investor Director at Starfish Ventures, said: “ It’s pretty amazing when you look at what Atmail has accomplished. Ben’s taken it from a small startup in the Blue Mountains to a multi-million dollar company with a global presence. It’s well established, with consistent revenues, a stellar client base and an
excellent attitude to continuous improvement. We’re looking forward to working with Ben and his team closely to develop and execute the company’s global growth.”
A media pack and images of the Atmail team is available online at atmail.com/company/press/
About Atmail
Atmail develops fixed and mobile email messaging and collaboration solutions. Products include: Atmail Cloud Services, Atmail Webmail, Atmail Email Server, Atmail Email Server Appliance. The company has more than 4,500 customers worldwide, including 1st tier ISPs, Telcos, global corporations and government agencies. Atmail manages email for more than 15 million users. For more information, visit www.atmail.com and www.atmailcloud.com.
About Starfish Ventures
Established in 2001, Starfish Ventures is an Australian venture capital fund manager partnering with high growth Australian technology companies with global potential. Starfish has over $400M in funds under management and has made investments in over 60 companies. For more information, visit
www.starfishvc.com
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