According to the Austin American-Statesman, Convio bowed to the inevitable and withdrew its S-1 filing today:
Convio Inc. said it will withdraw its planned initial public offering Tuesday, nearly a year after it filed to raise about $86 million in an IPO.
“It’s still part of our future down the road, but right now, the markets really are in pretty bad shape,” said Gene Austin, chief executive of Austin-based Convio, which sells software and customer-management tools to nonprofit organizations.
Not really Convio’s fault, really, all hell has broken loose in the markets and a Convio IPO is merely collateral damage.
On the other hand:
Today, Convio reported revenue of $14.7 million in the second quarter, a 35 percent increase from the year-earlier quarter. The company lost $893,000, compared with a loss of $2.1 million in the second quarter of 2007.
If Convio can get on the positive side of the balance sheet, especially if Common Ground takes off, who knows? As for IPOs, ii’s been the worst time for tech IPOs since the early 1970s with ZERO tech IPOs being offered last quarter. That’s about as bad as it gets. Apparently, it’s a combination of cheaper startup costs allowing startups to not have to raise VC and the horrific economy that is leading to very few IPOs.
I would again suggest that Convio’s move to Salesforce.com is a great move in terms of driving down provisioning and set-up costs per seat. I just hope that they have the audacity to really embrace SaaS for the rest of Convio’s software line.
This also means that Convio is finally coming out of its quiet period. I’m still curious as to what they have to say about that lawsuit that emerged in April for that charged that they had allegedly violated a credit card reporting act.
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Allan, thanks for the mention on the post. As you point out good and smart companies don’t go public in bad markets.
I want to point out a couple of inaccuracies. First, Convio is and always had been a true, multi-tenant SaaS provider. We embraced SaaS from day one and our growth shows that the SaaS model is meeting the needs of the nonprofit sector by delivering results, improving relationships with supporters and reducing costs. Every product and application we deliver is true SaaS. We had the audacity nine years ago and have continued that leadership today. Common Ground will take that to new levels by using the SaaS model to manage all supporter interactions.
On a non-GAAP basis we are on the positive side of the balance sheet, but for a fast growing company that is investing in innovation for clients that might not always be the case. For this quarter it represents the fact that our acquisition of GetActive and the synergy between the two companies is having a positive impact on clients and the company. You will continue to see innovation and investment in market needs, like Common Ground, that will support our clients needs and our growth.
Finally, the lawsuit was dismissed. Due to “clarification” of FACTA the suit was dismissed. There were hundreds of these suits based on language in FACTA that have now been dismissed.
We appreciate the attention. As you and I have communicated off the blog, this post shows me that I have work to do in educating the market on our leadership position as the only true multi-tenant SaaS provider in the market. As our results and the $377 million in online donations processed for the first half of 2008 show, our products, services and model are helping nonprofits fulfill their missions. That’s something we are very proud of. That’s what drives our innovation.
Sorry, Tad. I’m going to have to dispute you on the SaaS moniker. Your site in 2007 never mentioned SaaS in its products page and I daresay, the rest of the site as well. Only until recently in the earlier part of the year has Convio mentioned SaaS. I think it’s great that you folks WANT to be SaaS and are heading in that direction but until fairly recently, I think Convio was more prone to marketing itself as an eCRM or an online fundraising tool. This is going to be hard to dispute for Convio. Archive.org doesn’t show any mention of SaaS in the earliest web pages for Convio either.
I understand the marketing battles fought over the SaaS term — it’s an important concept now that nonprofit management has finally woken up to it. I’d be willing to say that, pending me actually seeing it, Common Ground seems to be the closest to what we mean by a nonprofit SaaS application in the enterprise space. I’d love to see it though and kick its tires. However, this statement:
is a bit much since that’s certainly backdating the SaaS marketing a bit far, don’t you think?
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