If you're an entrepreneur, you may want to avoid the Web 2.0 area, which is littered now with unpromising me-too ideas. You may want to consider something less sexy -- data security, for example.
Vontu, a six-year-old Silicon Valley (Cupertino, Calif.) company which makes software to avoid data loss, said it has been acquired by Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, for a cool $350 million. That's ten times the amount invested in Vontu by venture capitalists, meaning that management and investors both saw a nice profit.
Symantec said it plans to use Vontu to help customers prevent the loss of confidential information wherever it is stored.
There are lots of companies doing something similar to Vontu, but they all seem to have done well. There's Oakley Networks (which was bought by Raytheon for $193 million), Port Authority (bought by Websense for $90 million), and others that are still private, including Tablus, Reconnex and Vericept.
Investors in Vontu include Venrock and Benchmark Capital, which had the lion's share because of early investments, followed by U.S. Venture Partners and General Motors Asset Management.
This is a win by Benchmark partner David Beirne, who tried to hit big during the Internet boom with bets on companies like WebVan. WebVan, of course, was sexy, but was a notoriously bad investment, soaking up more than $1 billion in invetor's money before going out of business. Vontu, on the other hand, is an example of how patience -- over many years of toiling -- can lead to solid, robust results. Benchmark first invested in 2002, after the hype of the bubble was long gone.
Vontu said it is close to profitability and expects to make $43 million in revenue this year.