Send Word Now raises $14m more

NEW YORK--Send Word Now, a provider of emergency notification software as a service, announced this week $14 million in Series D financing, roughly 10 months after closing on $8.5 million in Series C financing. The current round of funding was led by new investor Palisade Concentrated Equity Partnership, a $140 million private equity fund managed by Palisade Capital Management, with continued support from existing investors Southpaw Asset Management and Ascend Venture Group. “We’re growing very rapidly,” said Send Word Now chief executive officer Tony Schmitz, “and we wanted to make sure we had the resources we needed.” Because of that growth, the organized raise “wasn’t difficult,” said Schmitz. “There was interest in general and we were able to get the round closed without much difficulty.” Also, this was begun before recent financial turmoil, so the funding wasn’t affected. The money, said Schmitz, will go toward sales and marketing efforts, as well as research and development. Further, “We’re a software-as-a-service business, so we have our equipment in various facilities around the country,” he said. “We’re looking at growing our footprint in terms of data centers that we’re in.” With a growing list of customers in higher education, Fortune 500 companies, and a number of financial services organizations, Send Word Now is in the process of building its list of integrator and manufacturing partners. Currently, the company has a white label version of the offering, and Send Word Now can “alert-enable” software so that alerts generated are automatically dispersed. It already has partnership agreements with D3 Security Management Systems and Sonitrol.