Athenian Venture Partners and River Cities Capital Funds participated in this round. The proceeds will be used to accelerate sales and marketing initiatives.
"ECNext has made impressive strides this year," said Francois Helou, partner at Athenian Venture Partners. "We’re pleased to make this investment. It clearly supports one of our principal strategies of funding companies which are succeeding in markets with significant growth potential."
"This new commitment reinforces the enthusiasm for ECNext’s business model and market position," said Chris Skudder, ECNext CEO. "Our customers are seeing paybacks under a year and online revenues growing at 30-50% annually, as end-users increasingly take advantage of online searches and resources to find and buy the facts, figures, and information they need to run their businesses. We look forward to bringing our uniquely profitable online sales approach to more companies."
About ECNext
Founded in 1996, ECNext builds and manages online
channels, enabling leading financial analysts, market
research firms and business publishers to grow their
business by selling high-value information via the
Web. ECNext customers include prominent industry
names such as Standard & Poor’s, a division
of the McGraw-Hill companies, and Gale Thomson.
ECNext’s hosted e-commerce solution provides the complete range of technology and services required for powering online content sales and are tailored to meet each customer’s unique requirements and brand. Web marketing programs drive traffic to the site; e-commerce capabilities provide a range of promotion, sales, and subscription options for capturing revenue; workflow and content management tools streamline maintenance; and tracking and reporting capabilities provide real-time intelligence for on-going business improvement.
ECNext partners with customers combining Web content sales expertise with customer domain knowledge to drive business success. Additional information is available at www.ecnext.com.
About Athenian
Athenian Venture Partners is a venture capital firm
headquartered in Ohio, with senior managers in Boston,
San Diego and London. The firm’s investment
focus is in the Information Technology/Communications
and Life Sciences industries. The firm’s five
senior managers bring over 90 years of combined
industry and investment experience in the firm’s
two areas of focus and provide significant industry-specific
value to Athenian’s companies. Athenian generally
invests in early stage opportunities and participates
in subsequent financing rounds until IPO or sale.
Founded in 1997, it is currently managing two venture
capital funds and has total capital under management
of over $70 million.
About River Cities
Founded in 1994, River Cities Capital Funds now
comprise three funds totaling $300 million. The
investment goal is to back exceptional management
teams in early to middle stage private growth companies.
The Funds focus on business services, information
technology and healthcare companies in the Midwest
and Southeast. Nine investment professionals work
out the main office in Cincinnati, Ohio and an office
in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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