News releasing right now that Box.net (more on them here) has just secured a $15million C round. Led by Scale Venture Partners and with previous box investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and US Venture Partners both taking a share of the action, this round shows that VCs are coming strongly out of a recessionary quiet phase and are actively looking to make investments.

Part of the impetus to invest in Box (beyond the obvious land grab) is the meteoric growth it seems to have achieved – Box has now got an impressive four million userbase and is seeing some really impressive revenue growth – they’ve seen enterprise revenue growth of more than 500% from 2008 to 2009, with reported continuing momentum  into 2010 with a record first quarter – up 300% from Q1  2009

Rory O’Driscoll, Managing Director of Scale Venture Partners is understandably talking this deal up, saying that:

For more than ten years, ScaleVP has backed companies that have built fast-  growing, successful businesses based on the software-as-a-service model, Box.net has  established a leadership position by challenging and redefining traditional  enterprise content management, and is poised for aggressive growth going  forward.

I touched base with Levie to quiz him on what this money really means for Box, while unwilling to disclose annual revenues he did indicate that 2010 looked set to be a big year for them with a 4X business revenue growth over 2009. Regarding profitability (I know it’s no longer trendy but coming from the real world of business where the bottom line was… well the bottom line, I have a penchant for profit), Levie said that their:
focus is on long-term growth rather than near term profitability, but we expect to be profitable within the next couple years.

How #box.net extracts more from their engineers.... Make 'em ... on TwitpicWe’ve long been fans of Box’s somewhat wacky marketing campaigns – from Billboards to T Shirts, from Space Travel to actual features – Box isn’t scared to come out fighting. Hopefully this money sees them continue their “young battler” approach and doesn’t see a more corporate Box emerge… actually having visited Box’s Palo Alto offices I can’t see them getting too formal…

Maybe some of the cash can upgrade the sleepover bunks in the office though…

 

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Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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