Bluetrain.com Series A and B Investment
On October 18, 1999, Kline Hawkes California, L.P. invested $300 thousand in series A preferred stock in a total financing of $1.2 million for Groupware ASP company Bluetrain.com, Inc. An agreement was reached in March 2000 whereby Kline Hawkes would lead a series B round with an investment of $5 million out of a total financing of $8 million. The Series B closed on April 2000. Located in Walnut Creek California, Bluetrain.com is an application service provider (ASP) software company providing hosted, Internet-accessible groupware to small and medium sized businesses.
The company's mission is to increase productivity of individuals and businesses by helping employees, partners and customers collaborate across all computing and connectivity platforms. Blutrain.com's first product, "Passport", is a browser-accessed, hosted groupware solution targeted at mid-market businesses and available via any web-connected workstation, PDA (personal digital assistant), Windows CE device (including TV set-top boxes) or mobile phone. Passport offers the standard features found in other popular groupware software packages, including email, calendars, scheduling, workflow, documents and forms management, Intranet publishing and news/content feeds. A major differentiation is that the hosted nature and architecture of the product will enable a non-technical employee to bring online a 300 member organization in just a couple of hours, start to finish. As of this writing there is no other product on the market that can provide universal access to groupware, and a market leader has yet to emerge in Internet-based groupware. Competition is diverse and uneven, creating a substantial marketing opportunity.
"We were attracted to Bluetrain because of its strong management team, led by Jack Weixel and Philip Carey, and their focus on this important market, providing small to medium sized businesses with a world class ASP product," said Nick Memmo, a Partner at Kline Hawkes and Bluetrain.com Board Member.