Comments on: Deals: SugarCRM Gets $14.5 Million, Ice.com Gets $47 Million

By: pwb

pwb — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:57:28 +0000

Sugar is cash-flow positive so this is a strong play to compete more aggressively. Nay sayers picked the wrong company to hate. Sugar is legit. If you want Saleforce.com-style hosting, get it from Sugar or other resellers. If you want to host yourself, that’s an option. As is custmization. It’s a pretty compelling proposition. And Sugar can easily make money even when a free, open source version exists.

By: Ohio Bob

Ohio Bob — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:49:44 +0000

Paul.., you probably should have spent some $$$ on hiring some devleopers to help you out instead of spending it on crack.

If you are claiming that your Big Contacts program IS a CRM app you should probably look at going into another sector/industry. CRM means more that just contact and calendar/task management…, it if didnt people would be saying that MS rules the CRM market with outlook.

And by the way.., Sugar isnt built by volunteers.., they have an engineering staff.., everything built by the community goes on their forge site a-la sourceforge

By: Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Pre-CES blogging

Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Pre-CES blogging — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:33:26 +0000

[...] 5min, Next2Friends, Sugar gets more sugar, [...]

By: Podii.dk » SugarCRM - Open Source CRM

Podii.dk » SugarCRM - Open Source CRM — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:27:03 +0000

[...] Source CRM (Customer Relation Management) systemet SugarCRM har iflg. TechCrunch fået endnu en runde venture kapital på $14,5 millioner. Det betyder at SugarCRM i alt har fået [...]

By: Paul Freet

Paul Freet — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:49:17 +0000

Sugar is a open-source Web1 clone of Salesforce.com built by volunteers. And they have spent how much so far? $41M+. Good grief. Big Contacts, which I think is a much better web2 CRM, was built almost entirely by myself.

An unprofitable company raising a 14.5M series D? My guess is the founders don’t have much equity left, but that’s just a guess. This is a great example of old school statuping and investing.

By: Baher

Baher — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:41:06 +0000

Although for a company with over 100 employees, $14.5 Milion is a justifiable mount, I wonder how will they make up for it with added revenue.

By: Steel

Steel — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:39:06 +0000

Ice is Nice, but nothing close to BlueNile. Someone is chasing their tails on this one.

By: Software Outsourcing

Software Outsourcing — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:30:10 +0000

Sugar CRM is really a great solution.. I think they deserve every dollar in this.

By: Amy Wilsch

Amy Wilsch — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:07:56 +0000

it’s easy enough to go and spend millions on advertising campaigns especially if they’re targeting enterprise accounts. But seems like they might have a tougher time overcoming the open source + enterprise - oil & water mix that many still perceive. I have used it and I like it, but still think of Sugar as a free, cool, open source project, and some stigma is still attached; so whether enough companies will leave SalesForce, NetSuite, Pivotal, Entellium, SAP, Sage, etc…..

By: MrktMind

MrktMind — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:42:16 +0000

Why would someone opt for their pay version when you can get an open source product that is very close to Sugar’s full pay version? Vtiger.com - in fact it was based on Sugar code.

Guess that’s why they needed the additional $14.5!

By: Ohio Bob

Ohio Bob — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:27:59 +0000

Quick stats from the corporate site.., over a 100 employees, opened a new office in Europe earlier in ‘07, and 13+ openings right now.

They spend just a fraction of the budget as the other enterprise software players, that is the whole biz pitch with having an Open Source model, you let the OS version be the majority of your lead gen.

Most of the $$$ is probably for growing head count and building out new regions until IPO or acquisition time.

By: chrisw

chrisw — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:27:52 +0000

$41 Million and they reside in an old building next door to a dead shopping mall? You’re right about CRM packages - it is a crowded space, and their product, while feature rich, still looks bloated and ugly (not that I have ever seen a good looking CRM system). Not to mention their video demo’s … you’d think they could afford some professional voice overs. They must have one hell of a marketing and management team!

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:17:53 +0000

They claim 100+ employees but when I was talking to someone he mentioned that they have 150 or so, with about 20-40 of those open source contributors that get a stipend. Their monthly burn rate could be anywhere from half a million and up to 1 million a month.

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:15:31 +0000

I don’t work for SugarCRM but fwiw I believe Sugar has a pretty big team and they actively hire, scanning craigslist and you can find a lot of their posts. The office they’re in is in this old and cramped building next to a dead shopping mall. They also do quite a lot of marketing via Google, consistently see their text links when looking up products. I would love to find out how much their revenue is, in terms of CRM software there’s so many alternatives it’s hard to stand out without mucho cash.

By: Amy Wilsch

Amy Wilsch — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:55:22 +0000

I like Sugar, but can somone in god’s name please tell me WHY an online software company would need $41MILLION dollars? (and on that much money why are they in a “dirty looking asbestos hellhole”?) what are they spending it on??

Ice I totally get - inventory, distribution, personnel to manage it, rolling accounts payable etc.

By: insider

insider — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:53:31 +0000

With all this money I hope that Roberts sticks to his creedo of a better product/engineering wins.

see here: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5566775.html
‘Roberts asks, “Why can’t the best product win, rather than who spends the most on marketing and sales?” He boasts about never having made a face-to-face sales call. “We have disruptive business model because our focus is on building a great product, not on marketing.”‘

It will be very interesting to watch this page http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/about/leadership.html and see exactly where all this money goes. Without divulging insider info, I’ll just say that Roberts and company have not done the above.

By: chrisw

chrisw — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:52:13 +0000

$41 million to develop a CRM package that can be downloaded for free? $30 Million invested by Victoria’s Secret to develop an ecommerce system?

Is it just me or does this seem really outrageous? When I read things like this I start to think we’re heading for another tech bubble burst. It’s just nuts!

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:39:03 +0000

Maybe Sugar can finally afford a real office space instead of being crammed in some dirty looking asbestos hellhole.