Huntington Beach-based software maker Data Impact Inc. last month raised $5 million in an initial round of venture funding.
Data Impact makes Internet-based software that automates the process of sending invoices to customers and collecting payments. The software also crunches data to produce accounting reports and manage collections.
“We eliminate the manual processes and the paper and postage elements that go into invoicing,” Chief Executive Bill Plant Mason said. “The big benefit of it is (customers) get their cash that much quicker.”
Princeton, N.J.-based Zon Capital Partners led the funding round, with additional money from private investors and the company’s founders.
Data Impact is looking to spend the money expanding its sales and marketing teams and getting its name out.
“The world doesn’t know about us, and we want to change those dynamics,” Plant Mason said.
The company expects to seek further venture funding down the line, he said.
Data Impact got started in the mid-1990s doing other types of electronic document management services.
The company doesn’t compete with big makers of business software here, including Irvine’s Epicor Software Corp., Costa Mesa’s Syspro USA and Irvine-based Sage Software Inc., according to Plant Mason.
Data Impact has a much narrower focus, he said.
“We are taking a small sliver of the market that causes CFOs the most pain, which is: How do they collect money fast and get rid of the disputes around collections?” Plant Mason said.
Data Impact has some 30 workers here and expects to see about $8 million in sales this year.
Another Software Funding
Aliso Viejo-based startup YouMail Inc., which makes software that delivers voicemail as data files, raised $410,000 in funding.
The source of the funding wasn’t disclosed, according to a report on technology news website Socaltech.com.
Investors got a stake in the company as well as debt that converts to stock, according to the report.
YouMail offers a software service that’s known as visual voicemail, which allows cell phone users to see an onscreen list of who called and at what time.
The service lets you pick up voicemails on a phone or any Internet-connected device.
The messages become digital files that can be sent to another person, an e-mail inbox or be saved online.
There’s one caveat: Users of YouMail’s services have to opt out of their wireless carrier’s own voicemail service.
YouMail was started by a handful of workers at New Zealand’s Zeacom Group Ltd., a maker of call center software that has its U.S. headquarters in Irvine.
The company’s founders spun off YouMail from Zeacom in 2006.
D.C. Office
Santa Ana’s Powerwave Technologies Inc., a maker of antennas, filters and other gear for cell phone towers, recently opened an office in Washington, D.C.
The company opened the office in a bid to grow business selling to the government, which includes building out wireless broadband networks for use in defense, homeland security, public safety and other government-related uses.
Jake MacLeod, vice president of Powerwave’s government solutions business, heads up the office and oversees strategic direction, business development and sales and marketing.
The company sees some $540 million in yearly sales and had a recent market value of about $240 million.
Blizzard Honor
The cofounders of Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc., part of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard Inc., were honored last month with a local arts award.
Allen Adham, Michael Morhaime and Frank Pearce received this year’s Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award, which was presented by nonprofit Arts Orange County.
Morhaime serves as Blizzard’s chief executive. Pearce is executive vice president of product development. Adham at one time was Blizzard’s president and chairman. He left in 2004 to start Irvine’s Tenfold Capital Management, a hedge fund operator.
The trio started a video game company in 1991, when they were freshly graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Today Blizzard is Orange County’s biggest software company by sales, tallying $1.3 billion last year.
The company is perhaps best known for its blockbuster video game, “World of Warcraft,” in which millions of players face off in online battle.
