Progress Partners.
Digital Dealing: New media pays for Progress Partners
The entrepreneurial spirit is thick at Progress Partners, a 4-year-old investment bank that aims to help new businesses get up and running.
The Boston-based shop recently closed several deals in the digital media space, which the company specializes in.
Two weeks ago, the company arranged the financing for Tremor Media's first $8.4 million venture capital funding round from Masthead Venture Partners in Cambridge and Canaan Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. New York-based Tremor Media provides online video advertising to clients that have included Yahoo Inc. (NYSE: YHOO) and Alltel Communications Inc. (NYSE: AT), among others.
Last week MOVO Mobile, a mobile marketing company in Sarasota, Fla., that Progress helped fund, was acquired by Neighborhood America Inc. in Naples, Fla.
"As far as digital media, I have always had an interest in the online world," said Nick MacShane, founder and managing director of Progress Partners, who has held marketing and product development roles at Virtual Access Networks and CMGI's MyWay.com. "It's a business I understand and you go with what you know. It continues to be a healthy business as advertising moves to the Web from TV and radio. I spend a lot of time with ad agencies and they make it pretty clear that over the next five years there will be a dramatic shift from TV to the Web."
MacShane founded Progress Partners in 2002, at first as a consulting company that provided strategy for venture capital-backed companies as well as public companies.
Progress Partners initially helped companies identify new markets post 9/11, when some business channels were greatly diminished. In 2004, the company helped its first startup raise money when it raised $3 million venture capital money for online advertising company ContextWeb Inc. in New York.
"Our background is in startups and investing in startups," said MacShane. "We have an appreciation for that experience, the dream, the possibility that's out there."
The profitable company currently has six employees and looks for companies seeking investments of $20 million and under. Last year, Progress Partners did five angel transactions and one seed level deal. This year, the company will close the year having done two or three venture capital deals and a pair of mergers and acquisitions. Despite its startup focus, the company plans to balance out its smaller deals by working with larger companies. Progress Partners bases its fee on about five to eight percent of what is raised in each deal.
"(Progress) brings a wealth of relationships in the institutional investment world that certainly any one company wouldn't have themselves," said Greg Johnson, co-founder, president and CEO of startup OneSky Jets in Manchester, N.H., a company operates like Expedia Inc. for the private jet crowd. "They are also great at networking. They do more than just fund raising."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Progress Partners opens NY outpost
Progress Partners, a boutique investment banking firm that focuses on early and mid-stage new media companies, has opened an office in New York, the firm said on Tuesday.
Boston-based Progress Partners said the new outpost will help the company expand its reach and further its mission of helping emerging new media companies with funding and strategic consultative services.
Progress Partners has, in the past, closed deals with a handful of New York-based companies including Worktopia, Tremor Media and ContextWeb.
"Establishing a New York office gives us a greater physical presence in a region that is the epicenter of new media," said Nick MacShane, senior managing partner at Progress Partners, in a statement.
AI
