Cloud-based phone systems provider RingCentral has raised $10 million in new funding from new investor Scale Venture Partners and Cisco. The company previously raised $45 million in funding from Cisco, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, DAG Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.
RingCentral markets an advanced, cloud-based replacement for legacy phone systems in the form of a hosted business phone platform with voice and fax functionality. The platform includes auto-receptionist, multiple voicemail boxes, call routing, business answering rules, extension dialing, call transfers, and integration with Smartphones. RingCentral’s phone systems basically make their clients appear bigger than they are.
According to an SEC filing, cloud-based phone systems provider RingCentral has raised $10 million in its third institutional financing round (with another $851,240 remaining to be sold).
The filing lists previous investors Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital – it’s unclear whether the company’s third backer, DAG Ventures, also participated. → Read More
GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007, relaunched as Google Voice way back in March. It’s still technically in private beta, but invitations aren’t all that hard to find.
From what we’ve heard, Google is very seriously planning to add a version of the Google Voice product to its Apps/Office suite of applications for businesses. Currently, businesses are offered enterprise versions of Google Docs (online Office), Gmail, calendar and other applications. More than 2 million businesses and 20 million people use Google Apps.
Google Voice gives users a phone number that they can then redirect to any phone – mobile, landline, VoIP, etc. My Google Voice number rings my home Vonage line and multiple mobile phones simultaneously. And the Android Google Voice application effectively takes over the phone for all outbound calls and text messages, too.
The consumer service will supposedly launch publicly sometime early next year. But an enterprise version, which will act as a virtual phone system for small businesses, may come soon after. → Read More
In venture capital, Vinod Khosla likes to go his own way, which is why he’s been so successful. He was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and then moved to venture capital and became a star partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he backed Juniper Networks, Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7 billion) and NexGen (sold to AMD and formed the basis for its challenge to Intel). About five years ago, after becoming a billionaire, he left Kleiner and started Khosla Ventures to invest his own money. He was mostly drawn to clean tech at a time before it was popular, but still kept his hand in Web and other tech startups (Aliph|Jawbone, iSkoot, RingCentral, Tapulous, iLike, Slide, Xobni). Khosla Ventures already has more than 50 companies in its portfolio (see slides below).
Earlier this month, Khosla raised $1.1 billion for two new funds, taking money from outside investors for the first time. I spoke with Khosla on the phone about his new fund, his approach to investing, clean tech and more. He compares Web startups to water startups, dismisses entrepreneurs who think about exits before building value, and contends that cleantech companies can command as high margins as hardware or software companies. “It’s a business strategy decision,” he explains.”
In the interview, Khosla talks about his investments in Aliph, RingCentral, eASIC, iSkoot, and Xobni. In terms of what he’s looking for, he declares “we love material science.” And in his seed fund, in particular, he says, “We’re not looking for completeness in things. We’re not looking for business plans. We are not looking for meeting every fiduciary requirement of an investor. We are looking for great technical ideas and great technologists.”
The 25-minute interview and full transcript are after the jump. I’ve bolded parts for emphasis. → Read More
Silicon Valley based RingCentral offers businesses a virtual telephone system (they say “Sound more professional, look like a bigger company”). It’s sort of a super-Vonage, but targeted to businesses first. And they have a lot more features, including a virtual PBX to manage multiple lines and “greetings recorded by professional voice talent.” The company took $12 million in late 2007 from Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures. Today they announced a second round, also $12 million. The round was led by DAG Ventures, which often follows Sequoia and other well known venture capitalists in second, more expensive rounds. CrunchBase Information RingCentral Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
RingCentral provides phone system integration and utilities to a traditionally under-served category, small to medium sized businesses. Similar to GrandCentral, RingCentral (founded in 1998) uses a virtual number to offer more services to their users existing mobile, fax, and landlines. RingCentral numbers can feature an auto-attendant, multiple extensions, call forwarding, voicemail, click-to-call, screening, logs, and Outlook integration. On Monday, the company will announce they raised a $12 million series A financing from two highly respected firms, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia. RingCentral is also adding a new CFO, Dinesh Lathi, who was an ex-VP of eBay. They have currently provisioned over 100,000 numbers and serve over 40,000 paying customers with plans ranging from $9.99 per month to $24.99 per month. With the recent acquisition of GrandCentral, VOIP as a utility instead of as a means for cheap calling rates has been a more successful strategy for the new telcos as of late. Virtual numbers, while requiring people to switch numbers, allow customers to use their phones without needing to download or adjust their calling behavior with new programs. RingCentral is based in Redwood City and currently has 80 employees. → Read More
