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About Coral
Coral Group is a leading venture capital firm focused on technology companies, with a particular interest in the communications, software, enterprise computing and media sectors. Coral partners with emerging companies in markets experiencing technology-driven transitions, which often result in new business modalities and new market participants. Since 1990, the Coral team has invested in over 100 companies in the United States, Israel and Europe contributing to their growth through direct involvement with management and boards of directors using Coral's deep operational experience and broad international relationships.
By working closely with management to create value, Coral has helped a number of companies achieve substantial success over the last two decades, including Macromedia (IPO and then acquired by Adobe), Magnet Communications (acquired by Digital Insight), Vizrt (IPO), Advanced Fibre Communications (IPO and then acquired by Tellabs), Optical Solutions (acquired by Calix) and Digital Generation Systems (IPO).
Value Add
Over the last twenty years, Coral has developed a reputation as a true value-added venture capital firm. With a long tenure in the venture business, Coral has developed a unique approach to working with companies. Coral assists its portfolio companies by helping to refine their business strategies, overcomeoperational issues and raise follow-on capital.
Coral’s support includes a wide range of critical company building activities, such as:
- Conceptualizing new products and product line extensions
- Developing new go-to-market strategies
- Building sales organizations and pipelines to drive product introductions
- Tapping into Coral’s network of relationships to assist in recruiting management talent
- Identifying and structuring strategic alliances
- Making customer introductions and building customer relationships
- Executing roll-ups and build-ups to increase scale
- Architecting transitions from a single product line to a multi-product portfolio and from a single geography to an international footprint
- Expanding a company’s capital structure to capitalize on new opportunities, including attracting new equity and non-equity sources of capital.
Investment Approach
Coral focuses on growth style investments in emerging technology companies. Coral typically adds two to five new investments per year, while continuing a strong engagement with its current portfolio. Coral employs a team-based approach to investing. While Coral’s portfolio companies typically have one to two members of our team dedicated to working with them on a daily basis, the whole Coral team plays a role in the adding to the success of each of our companies. Coral’s principals bring backgrounds as founders, operators and investors, and those diverse experiences, networks and expertise are each contributed to each company to accelerate growth and achieve industry leadership.
Investment Focus
Emerging growth stage technology companies in the communications, software, enterprise computing and media sectors.
Geography
Primarily in North America with selected investments in Israel and Europe.
Investment Size
Ranges in size from $3 million to as much as $15 million, typically invested in multiple rounds of financing.
Representative Active Investments
Delivery Agent - Leader in shopping-enabled programming and content monetization.
Entone - Provider of Television 2.0 systems for telecom and broadband providers.
Firetide - Leader in wireless mesh networking for the public safety, metro, enterprise and transportation markets.
FON Wireless - World’s largest wireless hot spot network.
InfoGin - Solutions for web content adaptation for the mobile environment.
PlayPhone - Leading distributor and aggregator of mobile content.
Red Bend Software - Leading provider of Mobile Software Management (MSM) solutions for the Mobile, WiMAX and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) markets.
Representative Historical Investments
Advanced Fibre Communications
Pioneer in developing the Digital Loop Controller (DLC) for extending digital services into the access layer of the network. Coral originally invested in AFC as a privately held company in 1994. By the time the company went public in 1996, Coral was the largest institutional shareholder. After eight years as a public company, Tellabs, Nasdaq: TLAB, acquired AFC, at a valuation of $1.5 billion with a revenue line of over $410 million.
Macromedia
Global leader in providing interactive multimedia development tools. Over one million professionals now use Macromedia’s Flash product to make interactive content, and 98% of all connected computers use the software to view rich content. The Coral team was the early and lead investor in Macromedia. The company was a public company for 12 years and was recently acquired by Adobe Systems, Nasdaq: ADBE, at a valuation of $3.4 billion.
Picolight
Picolight designs and manufactures optical transceivers and components for high-bandwidth optical systems in rapidly growing data center, enterprise, storage, and access markets. The company was the pioneer of the vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) for use in high speed optical network connectivity in data centers. Picolight was acquired by JDSU in 2007.
Vizrt
World’s leading graphics and content management platform for digital broadcasting. The company’s product suite is used by the world's leading broadcasters and publishing houses, including: CNN, CBS, Fox, BBC, Sky, ITN, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, TV Today, CCTV, NHK, The Globe and Mail, The Telegraph and Welt Online. Furthermore, many world-class production houses and corporate institutions, including both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, use Vizrt’s solutions. Vizrt is a public company traded on the Oslo Bors.
Investment Directors
Yuval Almog, Senior Managing Director, yuval@coralgrp.com
Mark Headrick, Managing Director, mark@coralgrp.com
Chris Smith, Managing Director, chris@coralgrp.com
Contact Information
Coral Group
60 South Sixth Street, Suite 2210
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Phone: (612) 335-8666
Fax: (612) 335-8668
Web: www.coralgrp.com
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