'05 funding winner offers some advice

Webroot CEO Moll supports conferees looking for capital

James Paton, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 24, 2006 at midnight

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BEAVER CREEK – An eye-popping investment of $108 million in Webroot Software has made David Moll the envy of his peers schmoozing in the mountains this week.

About 20 Colorado companies, from AccuCode to XAware, would love to get their hands on that kind of cash. Many would settle for less.

The businesses, in pursuit of funding, made their sales pitches to investors at the Venture Capital in the Rockies conference Thursday. Colorado economic development officials are listening, too, hoping the startups get money, grow and stay.

Webroot, whose deal was the biggest in Colorado in 2005, is the kind of story the state would like to promote and young companies want to emulate.

"We are representative of what you can do in this region," Moll, Web-root's chief executive, said in an interview at the Ritz Carlton Bachelor Gulch.

Just yesterday, it seems, Moll was asking for money. Now, he said, he's preparing his Boulder-based software company for an initial public offering and an expansion that should bring his work force from 300 to 400 by the end of the year.

"I hope one day to see us as a publicly traded company, headquartered in Boulder and a cornerstone of the local tech economy," Moll said, adding that the company already is spending money to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance legislation in anticipation of an IPO.

Today, his role at the conference is different. He's here to offer words of advice to up-and-coming outfits and to support Colorado's venture capital scene, not to deliver a spiel.

"I'm not raising money," said Moll, whose company goes after the "bad guys" running spyware. "I'm not presenting. I'm just a strong believer in our local entrepreneurial environment."

Moll didn't stay long at the Ritz on Thursday. He has other things on his mind, such as managing a company with annual revenue close to $100 million and wrestling with competitive threats, he said.

"That's far and away our greatest challenge," he said, citing Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee. "The competition has evolved in an incredible way."

Charlie Sander, the chief executive of another Boulder-based software company, Confio, said the Web-root investment is good news for Colorado. Boulder, as far as observers know, hasn't seen a deal of those proportions since Network Photonics, a maker of optical networking gear, reeled in $107 million in 2000.

"It was a tremendous deal and one that all of us look up to as something we'd like to do as well," Sander, a computer industry veteran, said in an interview. "For a Boulder company, it's pretty special.

"We all root for each other," added Sander, who is in search of venture money and expects a round of financing within nine months.

The $108 million was provided to Webroot by Technology Crossover Ventures, Accel Partners and Mayfield.

"We had much more interest than we could have satisfied," Moll said, noting that Colorado venture capital funds didn't participate.

Nurturing nascent companies is seen as an important economic development effort. Underscoring that point, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper mingled with investors and the executives seeking their money and delivered the conference's opening remarks.

Colorado companies received $651.8 million in venture capital last year, behind six other states, according to an Ernst & Young report.

Moll said in previous gatherings he received a lot of guidance. Now it's time to return the favor and help the state rise from that level.

"I owe that back on a karmic level," he said.

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