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Toba Rolls Ahead With String of Exits, IPO

Toba Capital, the Irvine-based venture capital firm launched by former Quest Software Inc. Chief Executive Vinny Smith, is on a roll with three recent exits and an initial public offering topping $100 million apiece.

Among the deals:

n MobileIron Inc., which got a late-stage investment by Toba. The Mountain View-based maker of security software specializes in protecting data accessed by employees on smartphones. It raised about $100 million when it went public last month.

Toba put about $10 million into MobileIron, and Smith acted as an adviser during the IPO process.

n San Francisco-based business analytics provider Jaspersoft Corp. was acquired in April in a $185 million deal by Tibco Software Inc. in Palo Alto. Toba’s $4 million investment in the company, a leader in the open-source software service market, dates to 2011 under the umbrella of Aliso Viejo-based Quest’s venture arm.

The Business Journal reported last week that Toba reacquired stakes in 10 companies that Quest backed during Smith’s tenure at the company. Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker Dell Inc. paid $2.8 billion for the software company in a 2012 deal that included assets stemming from about 70 deals made by Quest’s venture arm.

Bright, Cloudant

n Toba portfolio member Bright.com was acquired in February by LinkedIn for $120 million, its largest acquisition to date. The San Francisco startup makes specialized software that analyzes resumes and job openings in seconds and matches them together for employers.

n IBM acquired Cloudant Inc. for more than $120 million the same month. The Boston-based database service provider, which received an investment of about $1 million from Toba, enables developers to quickly and easily create next-generation Web and mobile apps.

Speed

The deals highlight Toba’s early speed in finding and backing a variety of companies in different stages of development. Toba has grown its fund with every ensuing exit, and quickly leaped to the top of venture capital firms in OC, with more than $300 million under management and 30 portfolio companies in less than two years.

“We’ll keep putting money in as we see opportunities,” said Smith, who cashed out some $800 million after the Quest deal.

The company now has five exits on its resume. The first came last year when SignNow Inc., a Newport Beach company that provides digital notary and other signature services, was sold for more than $10 million to Campbell-based Barracuda Networks Inc.

Smith is Toba’s lone funder—which sets it apart from in a field full of peers that typically raise money from limited partners, university endowments, and other institutional investors.

“We have a huge amount of flexibility because Vinny is the only limited partner, and he’s involved in every deal we do,” said Wilder Ramsey, a principal at the firm’s Bay Area office and former corporate development executive at Quest.

The recent exits follow of several investments Toba has made in OC-based startups. Toba now has six local investments totaling more than $40 million spread over three companies in Irvine, two in San Juan Capistrano, and one in Huntington Beach.

Google Designation

The Irvine trio includes security software maker SecureAuth Corp.; Alteryx Inc., a fast-growing data analytics software company led by industry veteran Dean Stoecker; and Mavenlink Inc., which Google Inc. recently named a premier app technology partner.

The Google designation for Mavenlink carries significant influence, as well as branding and promotional ties with the Mountain View search engine giant.

“It’s a critical connection,” said Roger Neel, cofounder and chief technology officer at Mavenlink. “Google is building a platform unseating traditional players like Microsoft.”

Mavelink’s software, designed to securely streamline workflow online through cloud-based file sharing and expense tracking, holds the top project management ranking in Google Apps Marketplace. It has more than 600,000 users and has raised about $16 million in three funding rounds since its 2008 launch.

Predixion Software, which specializes in predictive analytics, is a San Juan Capistrano company Toba has funded with Frost Data. Backers also include GE and New York-based consultancy Accenture PLC.

Toba has invested a little less than $1 million in Huntington Beach-based Alpine Replay. The company’s Trace product, which raised about $160,000 last year on Kickstarter, will be released in the coming months.

The device can be used by surfers, bicyclists and others to measure speed, jumps and other events on land or sea. It stores that data in the cloud and then uses it as an indicator as it autonomously cuts GoPro video footage in seconds to capture a user’s best runs, zeroing in on aerials, turns and other highlights.

“That gizmo is going to be worth a substantial amount of money,” Smith told a packed house at the Eureka Building in Irvine late last month for a Tech Coast Venture Network event. “I can’t tell you about one or more of our software that would be as remotely interesting.”

More in Store

There are more local deals coming, according to Smith.

“We’re working on some stuff in Orange County,” he said. “We’ve got some decent-sized companies.”

Toba is also busy in the Bay Area. It led an $8 million initial fundraising round in October for Cirro, a company founded by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Stuart Frost.

Cirro makes software geared for Big Data, analytics and cloud computing. The company is part of the portfolio of Frost Data Capital, a venture capital firm and incubator that grabbed headlines last month with a partnership with GE to foster technology startups.

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