Open source CRM company SugarCRM raises $19M

The alarm:clock was first to report on the recent Series C funding of SugarCRM, that brought $18.77M to this open source CRM software maker. According to Thomson VentureXpert, NEA led the round with participation from Walden International and initial investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson. NEA’s Scott Sandell has joined the board of directors.

Why am I writing about this ? Because this is one of the few enterprise software companies I have been interested in tracking. The company had raised their $5.75M Series B and their $2M Series A respectively 10 and 15 months ago, and did not require a new cash infusion – based on its reported market success. By implementing a dual license strategy, and leveraging the community to develop portions of the product, and make available through 21 languages less than 18 months after launch (which is more than Salesforce.com after 8 years).

VC friends of mine looked at SugarCRM’s Series B, which was very competitive, and priced the company over $20M. Given this newly raised amount, one can expect that NEA must have offered a pretty hefty valuation to convince the company and its investors to take that additional investment.

DFJ has scored a double whammy with Baidu and Skype exits this year, and it feels like SugarCRM is a nice one in the making. Congratulations to Josh Stein who led the original investment – and recently made Partner.

More:

• BusinessWeek published last week this interesting piece on open source, mentionning SugarCRM.
• Matt Marshall over at SiliconBeat features SugarCRM and Scott Sandell