Fortune Favors the Bold

I have always loved that quote from Virgil. My partner, Jon Callaghan, and I grew up with that quote indelibly inked in our mind after our years at Summit Partners because that was the firm’s tagline. It is as true today, though, as it was back in 40 B.C. when Virgil probably first said it. It’s a little uncouth to mash that quote with something crude and unelegant as ‘Size Matters’, but those are the two themes which jumped to my mind as one of our portfolio companies, Kurtosys Systems, acquired FundWorks two weeks ago.

Kurtosys and FundWorks are both high quality vendors of financial technology software and services targeting the asset management industry. Do you remember how dark the days were in March of 2009 for the financial world and the financial technology firms that sold to them? It was only six months ago, but it seems like six years. It was during this period that we looked at the portfolio for True Ventures and asked ourselves about how we could help any of our companies complete a transformational event. We had amply reserved capital, and we urged certain entrepreneurs to be very bold during the market downturn so that they could emerge much stronger and larger when the liquidity crisis was resolved and their underlying markets returned.

Enter FundWorks. Both companies are in London (Wimbledon to be exact for Kurtosys); both companies have good customer bases, good products, and good people. On paper, each company is strong where the other was weak. By combining forces, the new Kurtosys has scale, product/services breadth, a complete management team, and the ever important profitability. We provided the financing to complete the acquisition and believe that Kurtosys is set to grow much more rapidly in an industry that appears to be recovering and is in significant need of new information technology to address the business and regulatory needs of a more global and transparent financial marketplace.

Good luck to the new and larger, Kurtosys, and welcome to all the folks at FundWorks. It should be an exciting time for everyone and we are very excited to be partners with you all!

The announcement for the merger can be found here.