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Invoke Solutions Sees 70% Revenue Growth in 2004, Adds $6.5 Million Investment William Meurer, BEV Capital, Joins Invoke Solutions Board of Directors
WELLESLEY, MASS. -- March 28, 2005 -- Invoke Solutions, a leading innovator of real-time, interactive research technologies, today announced its revenue was up 70 percent in 2004 compared to the prior year. This top-line improvement was coupled with strong margin growth over the same period, sparked by increased partner transactions and streamlined operations. Invoke anticipates its 2005 revenue will at least double that of 2004. In addition, the company announced a total $6.5 million investment from Bain Capital Ventures and BEV Capital, and the addition of William (Bill) Meurer, a partner with BEV Capital, to the Invoke Solutions board of directors.
Invoke Solutions provides a technology platform that helps businesses gain fast feedback and detailed insights from their constituents to enable faster, better-informed decisions. An Invoke session, with its live, visual, interactive dialogue with up to 150 targeted individuals, gives clients immediate insight into the opinions, views and reactions of session guests. An Invoke session combines the adaptive questioning of a focus group with the large sample and statistical results of a survey. In other words, it provides both qualitative and quantitative research in a large, single real-time event.
To date, more than 300,000 people have participated in Invoke sessions providing feedback on everything from new product concepts, customer satisfaction studies, new TV commercials, employee morale studies, election issue feedback, and more.
“Last year marked a turning point for Invoke Solutions as we executed on several strategic initiatives that included expanding our partner program and gaining increasing adoption of many Global 2000 companies,” said Corey Torrence, Invoke Solutions’ Chairman and CEO. “As more businesses and organizations realize the value and competitive advantage that instant insight from their constituents can have on their decision-making processes, they will begin to “Invoke” all critical issues. It will become a natural part of the business process. Soon, executives around the boardroom, discussing a new product concept or employee relations campaign, will ask one another, ‘Have you Invoked that?’”
Meurer, BEV Capital, Joins Invoke Solutions Board
BEV Capital joined current investor Bain Capital Ventures in a $6.5 million investment in Invoke Solutions and added BEV Partner Bill Meurer to the Invoke Solutions board of directors. Meurer joined BEV Capital in 1998 and currently focuses on investments in consumer and technology-driven marketing services companies. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School, Meurer also sits on the boards of companies ranging from publishing to bed and bath textiles.
“BEV Capital is excited to be a part of the Invoke revolution,” Meurer said. “When clients experience an Invoke session, the service sells itself. Invoke is uniquely able to give clients detailed and definitive insight into their target constituents and to help them make quick, informed decisions.”
“BEV Capital brings additional expertise and vision to Invoke Solutions as it moves through an incredible period of growth,” Jeffrey Schwartz, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures, said. “The addition of Bill to the Invoke Solutions board expands our breadth of knowledge in the marketing services sector of the business, and he offers insight on how we can work to make the Invoke platform pervasive in all critical decision-making processes.”
About Invoke Solutions
Invoke Solutions, founded in 1999, is a key player in the knowledge and insight industry, helping to drive the transformation from traditional research methods to very rich, real-time solutions. Already used by many Global 2000 companies in the CPG, high-tech, pharmaceutical, and entertainment industries, Invoke is rapidly becoming the standard platform for organizations that need to make continuous, fast, fact-based decisions.
In response to the need to make faster decisions based on greater customer, employee or consumer insight, Invoke Solutions developed a unique, interactive platform that provides both qualitative and quantitative research in a single real-time session. The Invoke platform enables users to harness the power of the Internet to generate immediate insight from their target audience through a live interactive dialogue with 150 or more guests, witnessed by 40 real-time observers armed with powerful analytic tools.
About BEV Capital
BEV Capital, with over $200 million under management, was founded on the premise that great products and services alone do not make great companies. We believe that the right sales and marketing strategies, implemented by the right team, are also necessary ingredients. In addition to providing capital, BEV offers its portfolio sales and marketing expertise. We help entrepreneurs refine a company’s commercialization strategy to help great products and services become great companies. BEV’s investment focus includes the consumer sector, business services and software.
About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures is the Boston-based venture capital arm of Bain Capital, a global private equity firm with over $23 billion of assets under management. Since 1984, the firm has invested in over 200 companies, with such notable successes as Aspect Development, DoubleClick, Gartner Group, and Netfish Technologies. Bain Capital Ventures manages $500 million of equity, targeted to invest in companies that meet the following criteria: Stage – Seed through late-stage growth equity; Industry Focus – Software, hardware, information, healthcare, and technology-driven business services; Investment Size – Up to $20 million, with the capability of funding substantially larger investments through other Bain Capital funds.