SchemaLogic Raises $4.6 Million Growth Capital To Meet Rapidly Growing Demand; Madrona Venture Group Leads Investment

Business Wire, Jan 17, 2005

REDMOND, Wash. -- SchemaLogic, a leader in enterprise metadata and taxonomy management software, announced today that the company has received $4.6 million in venture funding, led by new investor Madrona Venture Group. The company's current investors, including co-founder Trevor Traina and The Phoenix Partners, also participated in the round. The financing will allow SchemaLogic to meet increased customer demand and accelerate product development.

"SchemaLogic experienced a surge of interest last year from new customers like P&G, Hewlett Packard, Raytheon, Government of Ontario, IBM, and Abbott Laboratories," said Jeff Dirks, president and CEO of SchemaLogic. "The problem is that companies have information scattered everywhere, in different databases, content management systems and Web sites, and that information is not categorized in any standard way. We effectively help companies create a common catalog, or index system, so that people can find and utilize information when they need it."

"We were impressed with the recent customer wins," said Greg Gottesman, managing director of Madrona and new board member of SchemaLogic. "SchemaLogic is emerging as a leader in an important new area of information management. People in large organizations set up IT systems without first developing a common business language. The result is hundreds of disconnected data silos speaking different languages, and it is only getting worse with the explosion of systems like SharePoint and Documentum. Since every large enterprise is struggling to improve the way information is shared and used, SchemaLogic is at the forefront of what we think will be a top information management priority in 2005."

SchemaLogic enables enterprises to build a common information model used across various content management, portal, and search systems. SchemaLogic's software aggregates, reconciles and publishes standard vocabularies, categories and other "information about information," known as metadata.

"Historically, companies have not developed a common language to describe and categorize information across different IT systems, and this variation creates huge problems," said David Johnston, managing general partner of The Phoenix Partners. "SchemaLogic provides the first platform for people to develop naming standards and shared vocabularies used across the enterprise. This is driven by the individual need to quickly find distributed information and the corporate requirement to control information delivery -- trends that make SchemaLogic an exciting company."

Andrew Warzecha, senior vice president of META Group, said, "Metadata is critical to resurfacing information in a contextual manner. META recommends that organizations move metadata management processes out of the tactical silos and take a strategic approach at the enterprise level while still respecting the specific application tactical requirements. Consequently, there is great and increasing need for products that can link legacy silos and provide a management layer across the enterprise."

About Madrona Venture Group

Madrona Venture Group LLC (www.madrona.com) is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the information technology economy in the Pacific Northwest. The firm targets investments in technology companies, with an emphasis on enterprise software and services, consumer software and services, and wireless, networking and infrastructure. Based in Seattle, Madrona has a $250 million fund that includes early-stage investments such as Isilon Systems, Impinj and ShareBuilder. For more information, visit www.madrona.com.

About The Phoenix Partners

The Phoenix Partners invests in early and mid-stage companies that have developed a long-term, viable business model, have an experienced management team and possess a major market opportunity. The Phoenix Partners works closely with management to provide capital, expertise, resources and strategic thinking to build industry leading companies. Founded in 1982 and based in Seattle, The Phoenix Partners has $100 million under management, with prior investments in aQuantive (AQNT), Niku Corporation (NIKU), and Conner Peripherals (SEAGATE) and Digital Theater Systems (DTSI). For more information, visit www.phoenixvc.com.

About SchemaLogic

SchemaLogic helps large enterprises develop and publish a common business language to describe and retrieve distributed information. SchemaLogic's software enables users to create a shared index for information residing across an enterprise (an ever-expanding electronic "card-catalog"). With a Web Services-based repository for metadata definitions and a collaborative process for change management, SchemaLogic makes it simple for various content management systems, databases, Web sites and business applications to share core, standard vocabularies, taxonomies and metadata. Benefits include improved information findability, governance and business agility, which can save millions of dollars at any large organization.

For more details, see www.schemalogic.com, send email to info@schemalogic.com or call 1-425-885-9695.