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Enterprise Software - Thursday, April 14, 2005

Idiom Technologies - Profile

HQ: Waltham, MA

Founded: 1998

Management: CEO Joe Fiorentino previously was VP of sales at the content management company Eprise. Chairman and founder is Eric Silberstein who co-founded the defunct golf portal Chipshot.com.

Investors: In April 2005, Idiom raised $6M in Series E from Sigma Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Globespan Capital Partners and Greylock Partners. The company has raised close to $50M, most of it during the bubble.

Business Model: The company sells software that helps managers of large Web sites to update content in multiple languages.

Competitors: SDL, GlobalSight, Trados Uniscape, Bowne.

Dirt: This space is so depressing. VCs have invested untold millions here with no return. The pitch has been that the Internet is global so managing multilingual Web sites should be a big business. But most companies are decentralized and just let their country units manage their own sites, or they are like Google and just develop their own multilingual Web technology. The latest $6M investment in Idiom is a bald attempt by its VCs to keep the company afloat long enough to sell it so that they might recoup some of their losses.