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Backed by Commonwealth Capital and Pilot Ventures, Jazd Markets Closes $4M Round - cbl
By citybizlist Staff
ANDOVER -- Jazd Markets Inc. has fulfilled its $4 million equity offering with four investors, according to an SEC filing.
Two of the company's investors are Waltham-based Commonwealth Capital Ventures and Pilot House Ventures, of Boston.
As citybizlist reported, in December 2008 Andover-headquartered Jazd Markets raised $8 million in a Series A financing round, which was led by the two investment firms. Founded that same year, Jazd Markets offers a marketing-as-a-service platform built by online marketers and business-to-business publishers.
Principals named in the current Reg D filing include directors Michael Fitzgerald (Commonwealth) and Stephen Van Beaver (Pilot House).
Also named are Jazd CEO James Bedard; David Block, vice president of engineering; David Southwick, senior vice president of sales and service; CTO Scott Durgin; Viki Zabala, vice president of marketing; Controller Anthony D'Amore. A portion of the offering's proceeds may be used for working capital, which would include compensation to those executive officers.
Reg D filing: http://tinyurl.com/3y3bdro
Also at citybizlist, see:
JAZD Markets & Brainshark Announce Partnership
JAZD Appoints Scott Durgin as Chief Technology Officer
JAZD Markets Announces Expansion and Growth Opportunities
JAZD Adds Search Marketing & SEO Executive Eric Melin as VP, Traffic Generation Team
JAZD Markets Closes $8M Series-A Round
Bios from Jazd Markets' Web site:
James Bedard - CEO
Jamie Bedard is founder and chief executive officer of JAZD Markets. For more than 20 years, Bedard has built innovative online marketing services, global marketing strategies and contextual content companies. Prior to JAZD, Bedard was President and CEO of Aberdeen Group where he led one of the most celebrated turnarounds in the online marketing sector. During the transformation, Bedard shifted Aberdeen Group's focus from a traditional market research analyst firm into one of the most powerful online firms in the market. Focusing exclusively on fact-based research, Aberdeen delivered high quality lead generation services for online technology advertisers. The transformation of Aberdeen Group culminated in a very successful sale of the firm to online marketing service leader, Harte-Hanks. Bedard is also on the Board of Directors of ValueCentric and on the Board of Advisors for Powered.com. Bedard earned a B.A. in Economics from Bates College and an MBA from Central Michigan University.
David Block - VP of Engineering
David Block has 20 years of design, technical and management experience in the software industry. Before joining JAZD Markets he served as Senior Vice President of Product Development at ChoiceStream, playing several leadership roles in the creation of ChoiceStream's personalization software product line. Before ChoiceStream, David co-founded and served as CTO of myteam.com, a direct-marketing/web-services company for the amateur sports market which merged with the Active Network in 2001. Prior to myteam.com, David was architect and interface designer at Lotus Development; and prior to Lotus, produced Internet and CD-ROM products for Vertigo Development. David received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Brown University.
David Southwick - SVP Of Sales and Service
David Southwick brings over 25 years of general management, sales and customer service experience from the technology industry to JAZD Markets. Prior to joining JAZD, Southwick served as Chief Operating Officer for the Aberdeen Group, where he helped to grow the business from $5 million to $25 million in less than three and a half years. Southwick was a key player of the management team leading Aberdeen's sales and research operations to a successful acquisition by Harte-Hanks. In 2002 David joined WatchIT, a private multimedia based software platform for education and lead generation, where he helped rebuild the business model and create over $1M in relationships with IBM, Microsoft and Cisco. Southwick helped WatchIT achieve profitability for the first time in 5 years within 9 months. Beginning his career at Forrester Research, where he was the 9th employee, he served as the Director of Pacific Rim Operations. Pioneering Forrester's first international endeavor he led the end-user and vendor business and the sales and marketing for the Forrester "Wave" product, Southwick managed a staff of over 50 employees and a P/L of $35 million during the five years until IPO. Mr. Southwick is a graduate of the University of Maine with a degree in Advertising.
Scott Durgin - CTO
Durgin has been a pioneer in high technology for the entirety of his career. Previously he was the Founder and CTO of Aligned Global, an innovative offshore development company focused on web and emerging technologies companies. Durgin has had impressive success with the development of revolutionary online platforms. Durgin and his team were instrumental to the origination and implementation of deep-tagging, metadata-driven navigation of online video while the CTO of Gotuit Media, a Highland and Atlas funded venture. He then went on to hold the position of Senior Vice President of Products and Operations at Carlyle-funded Adesso Systems, a distributed computing platform for business and social media sharing.
Viki Zabala - VP of Marketing
Viki Zabala brings over 9 years of high impact global online marketing and product strategy experience to JAZD Markets. Zabala's track record around proven, global and measurable marketing programs has contributed to increased sales and return on investment in high-tech Fortune 500 to SMB companies. Passionate about driving business results through online marketing, Zabala leverages her expertise in search engine marketing, product marketing and interactive programs to drive a new paradigm - MaaS - marketing as a service for B2B advertisers . Before joining JAZD she has led several software companies to success producing global acquisition programs designed to maximize lead generation, retention and conversion. Zabala was a pioneer in Avid Technology's online presence and drove marketing programs around their award-winning video and audio technology in developing TV shows, commercials and news programs. In past stints Zabala has increased internet lead generation by 30% through search engine optimization, spoken at industry events such as OMMA and won the "Going for the Gold" award from her online results. Zabala has a Bachelor's Degree of Science in Business Administration from University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Anthony D'Amore - Controller
Anthony brings over 13 years of accounting experience from the Advertising and Marketing industry to JAZD Markets. His accounting career started at Arnold Advertising, where he began as a Staff Accountant and quickly moved up the ladder to Budgeting Manager, Revenue Manager and eventually Controller. Anthony received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Suffolk University.
Board of Directors
Michael Fitzgerald, Commonwealth Capital Ventures
Michael T. Fitzgerald is a Founder and Managing General Partner of Commonwealth Capital Ventures. He has more than 20 years of experience in early stage venture investing. His investment activity has been focused on early stage technology and service companies with an emphasis on all aspects of the software industry. Prior to founding Commonwealth, Mike was a General Partner at Palmer Partners, the manager of three early stage venture funds. During that time he also ran Distribution Management Systems, an enterprise supply chain software company which was later sold to Cullinet Software. He began his career and association with the software industry at IBM where he was a top performer in the sales and marketing organization. Mike earned a BA from Amherst College and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Stephen Van Beaver, Pilot House Ventures
Stephen Van Beaver is a General Partner of Pilot House Ventures Group. Prior to joining Pilot House, Stephen was Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Operations for Road Runner LLC. Stephen also held senior management roles with MediaOne, Continental Cablevision, AT&T and Shiva. He currently serves on numerous boards. He graduated from University of Hartford and holds an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University.
Posted July 28, 2010