Following closely behind Alfresco’s Series C round of $9M, SpringCM received $10M in their Series B round this week. Many of us are familiar with the open source approach to content management by Alfresco, but not as many of us have heard of SpringCM. And that’s where SpringCM plans to focus their new found $14M ($4M was a credit extension) on marketing. Better still as part of the investment Jeffrey Beir joining their board of directors. His success in building eRoom will be a great help at this point of growth.
But what this really shows is that venture capital still sees ECM as a growth market and especially that SaaS as a viable option for ECM. The round of investment was lead by North Bridge Venture Partners to whom ECM is not new with Authentica, eRoom, and Idiom as part of their portfolio. For companies to get VC funding they need to open their books to outsiders. VC don’t invest in vision (angels do) so a company needs to show real revenue, especially the second or third time around.
We’ve all had a good feeling about open source ECM but if we’ve been looking for indications that ECM SaaS is starting to stick, then this is it. SpringCM is definitely a company to keep an eye on.
