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October 20, 2006
Germany's Itedo Acquired
Parametric Technology, a US engineering software company, has acquired Hennef, Germany-based Itedo Software GmbH and its US subsidiary, a technical-drawing software company, for $17 million. Itedo employs 34, launched its first product back in 1990, and is best known today for its IsoDraw software, used in creating and maintaining technical illustrations.
As far as we can see Itedo was a bootstrapped venture that grew over the years to establish itself a niche in CAD and tech illustrations in the aerospace, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. The company's founders are now newly minted millionaires, which made us think of something we read in Baytech Ventures' new newsletter this morning.
The founding partner writes that the issue with Germany is not a lack of entrpreneurs - it's that VCs have work to do in order to convince smart founders to take their money and make the case for a venture type growth (at least that's how we read it).
Contrary to popular opinion, there has always been a strong entrepreneurial culture in Germany, although perhaps not one attuned to the VC mindset. Don't forget that the "Mittelstand" - a term related not so much to the size of a company but to its private ownership status is still the backbone of the German economy. This was only made possible by a class of entrepreneurs.These start-ups are not confined to the VC-investment areas such as IT, communications and life sciences, but cover the whole business universe and many of them never grew to a dimension where venture capital become necessary while others had no inclination to attract it.
So I don't really see a shortage of capable founders and entrepreneurs, just the fact that not all of them have a propensity towards venture capital, because they intend to retain full ownership in the company or want only to answer to themselves. In my opinion, it's our industry’s challenge to sell the advantages of VC-backing to as many founders as possible.
Itedo is an example of what he is talking about, we'd say. And there are many others bootstrapped startups in Germany that one of these days we'll get around to profiling.
Read - Baytech Briefing 09/2006 · Interview
Read -PTC pays $17M for German software firm - Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology (bizjournals mass hightech)
Posted on October 20, 2006 11:09 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Specialized Software | Permalink
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