Send Word Now lands another $14m in financing

NEW YORK—Send Word Now, a provider of emergency notification software as a service, announced this week $14 million in Series D financing, roughly 10 months after closing on $8.5 million in Series C financing. The current round of funding was led by new investor Palisade Concentrated Equity Partnership, a $140 million private equity fund managed by Palisade Capital Management, with continued support from existing investors Southpaw Asset Management and Ascend Venture Group. “We’re growing very rapidly,” said Send Word Now chief executive officer Tony Schmitz, “and we wanted to make sure we had the resources we needed.” He said Because of that growth, the organized raise “wasn’t difficult,” said Schmitz. “There was interest in general and we were able to get the round closed without much difficulty.” Also, this was begun before recent financial turmoil, so the funding wasn’t affected. The money, said Schmitz, will go toward sales and marketing efforts, as well as research and development. Further, “We’re a software-as-a-service business, so we have our equipment in various facilities around the country,” he said. “We’re looking at growing our footprint in terms of data centers that we’re in.” With a growing list of customers in higher education, Fortune 500 companies, and a number of financial services organizations, Send Word Now is in the process of building its list of integrator and manufacturing partners. Currently, the company has a white label version of the offering, and Send Word Now can “alert-enable” software so that alerts generated are automatically dispersed. It already has partnership agreements with D3 Security Management Systems and Sonitrol. "We invested in Send Word Now because of the company's reputation for excellence in on-demand alerting and response services, and because we believe Send Word Now has a tremendous opportunity to expand its footprint and increase its revenue," said Jeffrey D. Serkes, chief operating officer of Palisade Capital Management, in a prepared statement. "Send Word Now has a client list with many Fortune 500 companies and is poised for rapid growth. We believe that the capital that Palisade has invested in Send Word Now will assist the company in quickly achieving its goals." "This financing will fuel the growth of Send Word Now as we invest in software development, infrastructure, sales and marketing," said Tony Schmitz, CEO of Send Word Now, in a statement. "We are extremely pleased to have attracted an investor of this caliber, and we look forward to working closely with Palisade and our current investors as we continue to grow."