The allure of taking over the business software unit he grew to about $1 billion in annual revenue until its $2.8 billion sale in 2012 to Dell Inc. wasn’t enough to win over Vinny Smith.
Smith, who runs Toba Capital in Newport Beach, grew Aliso Viejo-based Quest Software Inc. into a prime takeover target when he was at the helm, but turned down the opportunity to join two private-equity companies interested in acquiring Dell Software from the PC giant.
The unit recently was sold to Francisco Partners in San Francisco and New York-based Elliott Management.
Smith, who exudes a casual air and dresses the part these days, wasn’t interested in leading hundreds of employees and boardroom talks across the globe.
“I’m just kind of over the corporate office. I had it for so long. It’s just not in my nature,” he told the Business Journal in a recent sit-down interview. “For me, it was more about building a great company, a great culture, a place for people to work, enjoying my kids when they were growing up. Finding that balance. That was my objective, that’s what suited me, but it’s not what suits everyone.”
WD Deals
Irvine-based storage products maker Western Digital Corp. has made two strategic venture deals in the past few weeks.
The first investment went to a Northern California company that helps cloud service providers move data between storage devices and the network.
Kazan Networks Corp.’s Ethernet-based technology is billed as minimizing latency by connecting high-performance storage to racks of servers in the data center.
It’s a key benefit for solid-state drive makers such as WD, as more data centers utilize the high-capacity drives, which store data on chips rather than spinning disks.
WD is the largest disk drive maker in the world, with annual sales topping $14.5 billion.
Kazan’s $4.5 million Series A funding round was led by Samsung Ventures. Intel Capital also participated.
WD in the second deal co-led a $77 million funding round for Redwood City startup Upthere with noted Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.
Upthere just released its Upthere Home app, which is designed to be a one-stop shop for storing and sharing photos, videos, music and documents.
The app costs $4.99 a month for 200 gigabytes of storage and incorporates a new operating system called UpOS, which was developed to support the expanding amount of content created in different formats from different devices and services.
WD has made a few venture capital deals in the past few years, including San Jose-based start-up Skycera Inc., which makes storage systems for corporate customers, and Tegile Systems Inc., a Bay Area company that specializes in hybrid storage products.
Smith Micro Buys
Aliso Viejo-based Smith Micro Software Inc. acquired a company in Portugal that develops consumer applications that monitor children, the elderly and others who require care.
The roughly $570,000 buy of iMobileMagic will add 16 workers to Smith Micro’s operation and 15 carrier and enterprise customers, the company told the Business Journal.
Co-founder Marco Leal will join Smith Micro’s management team.
The purchase comes amid heightened security concerns in the U.S. and countries in Europe that have dealt with several deadly terrorist attacks in the past six months.
Family locator service users are projected to hit 70 million this year in North America and Europe, up from 16 million in 2011, according to Berg Insights. About 30% of children in industrialized nations own a smartphone by age 10.
The iMobileMagic buy is Smith Micro’s second in the past four months. The company acquired Birdstep Technology’s software development and marketing arm in Stockholm, Sweden, in March for $2 million, according to regulatory filings.
