A group of former Mercury Interactive executives are behind a new Israeli-based startup called Capriza, which is still in stealth mode. But the company is in the process of raising $10.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz and another investor to bring corporate IT onto smartphones and tablets (with $2.5 million of that still outstanding).
The founding team consists of CEO Yuval Scarlat (former senior VP of products at Mercury Interactive), chairman Amnon Landan (former chairman and CEO of Mercury Interactive), Oren Ariel (former CTO of Mercury Interactive), and Ronnen Armon (former VP R&D). Mercury Interactive was a provider of enterprise IT optimization software which was bought by Hewlett-Packard for $4.5 billion in 2006. It was later caught up in the SEC’s crackdown on backdated options (Landan was specifically called out in that affair). The litigation was settled, and Mercury is still part of HP’s enterprise software group.
The Marker was the first to report the news (in Hebrew, Google Translate version). I’ve confirmed the investment with Andreessen Horowitz.
There is a bit of an HP connection here. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz also sold their company, Opsware, to HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion. Andreessen currently sits on the board of HP. They are certainly aware of Mercury’s contribution to HP’s business, but also have an appreciation for enterprise startups given their Opsware experience.