Andale Closes $41m Round, Adds Execs
April 17 – 21, 2000
Issue 193
New York and London

Andale, the web-based auction management start-up, has closed a $41 million round of financing (OLR No 191), with funding from new investors Bowman Capital and Tarrant Venture Partners. Prior investors Accel Partners, Mohr, Davidow Ventures, Oak Hill Venture Partners and others opened the purse strings again. Andale CEO Munjal Shah says the company will use the money to integrate its Auction Business Management service with four-five more marketplaces. Currently the service, which lets auction power sellers and small businesses automate and manage their businesses across various auction sites, works with eBay, Amazon.com Auctions, Yahoo Auctions and B2B marketplace BigVine.

The Mountain View, California company, which has grown from six employees last August to 100 today, also created three new executive positions. It brought in Stephanie Schwartz, former VP and corporate controller at Informix, as VP of finance and administration. Sharon Knight, former head of customer services for Microsoft's WebTV unit, is now Andale's VP customer service. Tom Todaro, the start-up's new chief strategy officer, was the founder and former VP of corporate development at Hardware.com. Andale also named David Hayden, founder of Critical Path to its board.

Shah says the company's goal is to "take our existing lead and make sure nobody catches us." Andale just started charging for its service at the beginning of April and is waiting to see how the pricing models work. It plans to keep adding new features until it has automated "every single aspect" of what a small business needs to manage its sales through Internet marketplaces. Shah is being conservative with Andale's IPO plans, wanting to "build a successful business piece by piece" before taking on the volatile stock market.