Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Austin Ventures Commits Up To $50M To Silverback Acquisitions

Austin Ventures said today that it has committed to invest up to $50M in a new, consolidation firm called Silverback Acquisitions, headed by Austin entrepreneur Jack McDonald. McDonald is the former Chairman and CEO of Perficient. According to Austin Ventures, Silverback Acquisition is looking to consolidate "subscale" enterprise software companies. Austin Ventures said it has so far seed funded Silverback with $11.5M in capital. Silverback's President and COO is Chris Ney, who was CEO of Versata, Tenford, and ETI; former Perficient CFO Mike Hill serves in the CFO role at Silverback. Silverback is also based in Austin. The new funding follows a similar model to recent investments by Austin Ventures into Dachis Group--another $50M committment by Austin Ventures, headed by former Razorfish co-founder Jeffrey Dachis--and Century Payments--headed by former Chase Paymentech's Robert Wechsler. More information »