Catching The VC Wave

One integrator is hoping to catch a wave of venture financing just in time to ride ahead of the crowd into e-business services.

Avicon closed its second round of venture funding, led by BancBoston Ventures along with Odeon Capital Partners and Wolfson Equities, raising $9 million. A first round of funding in 1999, just after the company opened its doors, raised $3 million.

"Our plan is to go IPO in about a year," said Richard Block, CFO of Avicon, based in Natick.

Avicon closed its second round of venture funding, raising $9 million. A first round in 1999 raised $3 million.

Last year, Avicon turned in $1.8 million in revenue and expects to increase that between 600 percent and 700 percent in 2000, Block says.

"We started this venture round thinking that, based on feedback on our business plan and business proposal . . . that we were in the heart of the part of the industry that was going to be very fast-growing," Block says.

The integrator's client list includes Texas Instruments, Cendant, Exel Logistics and Siemens.

Avicon's management team is well-equipped to work with top-flight companies to iron out thorny supply chain and business process issues, says Matt Smith, managing partner at Odeon Capital.

"They have the personnel there that can sit down with leaders of the best and brightest companies and think very strategically," Smith says. "This is where they need to go."

Among new executives on board are vice presidents Renee Van Leuvan, who will run Avicon's Asian operations out of Taiwan, and Dennis Toohey, who will run Avicon's Silicon Valley operations in San Jose, Calif.

Despite its revenue and growth rate and the corral of clients, Avicon has some challenges to meet before pulling the trigger on an IPO.

"A lot of companies utilize IPOs to build a business," Smith says. "We're not there right now. We still want to assure and ensure more predictability of revenue, predictability of earnings, before we head to the markets," he says.

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