Broadwick’s Shopping List Includes $4M in Additional Venture Capital

DURHAM, N.C. – Ryan Allis, the young chief executive officer of fast-growing Broadwick Corp., is going shopping next week at the new Umstead Hotel & Spa in Cary.

He’s not looking for a new shirt at a boutique, however. He’s going to be looking for investors and money at the Southeast Venture Capital Conference.

Allis, 22, will have a strong presentation to make. He has product (e-mail marketing tools) in a fast-growing market space. He has revenues. He already has one investor (NC IDEA). And Broadwick is growing at a brisk pace to the point that the company could already be profitable.

However, Allis isn’t worried about being in the black. Rather, he wants to grow the business, which is based around proprietary permission based e-mail technology.

“While we could be profitable if we chose to be, we prefer to invest in additional development and marketing efforts,” Allis told WRAL Local Tech Wire.

Another Broadwick spokesperson added: “We are going to SEVC next week to talk to VCs about new funding ranging up to $4 million.”

Broadwick is coming off a strong performance in 2006:

• Its customer base more than doubled, to 7,580 from 3,706.

• Since Jan. 1, the customer base has grown by more than 400.

• Sales more than doubled, too, to $2.9 million.

• Its fourth quarter was especially strong, producing $1.05 million in revenue.

Headcount grew along with the revenues. Broadwick added 25 employees and enters 2007 with 43 in all.

A new version of Broadwick software known as IntelliContact was released in December for larger enterprise groups. IntelliContact includes features such as surveys, autoresponders, RSS feeds, blogs, and tracking.

NC IDEA invested $500,000 in Broadwick last spring, and the company now has postive cash flow.

In reviewing the year, Allis said in a statement that growth exceeded his expectations.

“We saw a very strong fourth quarter pushed forward by our new product releases, a marketing increase, and high political and retail email volume due to the election and the holiday season,” he explained.

“We have been fortunate to have been able to put together a rockstar team over the past four years and without them our success to date would not have been possible. We are very excited to enter 2007 moving full steam ahead toward our mission of becoming the leading worldwide provider of on-demand communications software.”