Digital
Dealing: New media pays for Progress Partners
October 13, 2006
by Lisa van der Pool
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."
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