Asta Networks Closes First Round of Funding; Company Secures $3 Million in Funding With Madrona and ARCH as Lead Investors

Business Wire, August 22, 2000

Business/High Tech Editors

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 22, 2000

Asta Networks, the leader in developing solutions to counter Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, announced today it has secured $3 million in the company's initial round of financing led by the Madrona Venture Group and ARCH Venture Partners.

Asta Networks is the market leader in the development and deployment of end-to-end distributed network solutions to increase Internet reliability. The company's service is designed to detect, trace and counter DoS attacks, improving the Internet's viability and flow of communication.

In addition, Asta Networks has appointed Alex Knight, Managing Director at ARCH Venture Partners, Greg Gottesman, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group and strategic advisor Daniel Weld, professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, as new members of the board of directors.

"ARCH has a long history of building companies in partnership with researchers and we are confident that this group's research at the University of Washington and other leading academic institutions will play a key role in building Asta Networks and truly world class products and services," said Alex Knight of ARCH Ventures.

"We are enthusiastic about the decades of combined experience the Asta team brings to detecting and addressing Denial of Service and other disruptive attacks," said Greg Gottesman, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. "As the Internet becomes an integral part of the economic and social fabric of society worldwide, maintaining and protecting the integrity of the overall system is absolutely essential."

"Asta Network possesses a unique combination of expertise and experience to address DoS attacks that are proliferating rapidly throughout the Internet," said Dr. Tom Anderson, CEO of Asta Networks. "With assistance from our initial financiers, Madrona and ARCH, Asta will provide the most effective solution to counter these disruptive events. "

Asta Networks

Asta Networks (www.astanetworks.com) was founded by worldwide leaders in the fields of Internet software, networking, operating systems and security. Seattle-based Asta Networks is creating network infrastructure solutions to improve Internet reliability. Asta's first solution is designed to monitor, track, and counter Denial of Service (DoS) attacks for ISP networks.

ARCH Venture Partners

With offices in Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, ARCH Venture Partners (www.archventure.com) is a premier provider of seed and early stage venture capital for the commercialization of innovations in information technology, life sciences, and the physical sciences. The partnership's special expertise is to found, co-found, and build technology firms from startup. Partnering with entrepreneurs, academic institutions, and national research laboratories nationwide, ARCH has built more than 60 successful companies, many of them from the concept stage. ARCH's investments include, among many others, New Era of Networks, Apropos Technology, Caliper Technologies and Nimble Technology.

Madrona Venture Group

Madrona Venture Group LLC (www.madrona.com) is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the Internet economy in the Northwest. The firm targets investments in Internet and wireless technologies, with an emphasis on infrastructure, platform technologies, consumer services, and business software and services. Based in Seattle and Portland, Madrona has a $250 million fund that includes early-stage investments such as Amazon.com, Etrieve, Nimble Technology and Terabeam.