Ignition Partners Leads Funding Round; Brad Silverberg Joins Board of Directors
Seattle, Wash — Avvo, Inc. (www.avvo.com), an online company focused on helping consumers navigate the legal industry, today announced a $10 million Series B round of financing. The round was led by Seattle-based Ignition Partners, LLC and included an additional investment by Benchmark Capital, who led Avvo’s Series A round of financing. Avvo has raised $13 million to date. Avvo also announced the appointment of Ignition Founding Partner Brad Silverberg to its board of directors. The new funds will be used to fund the company’s operations, including continuing to build its world class team.
“This investment from Ignition and Benchmark further supports our belief that we have the right solution for helping consumers navigate the highly confusing legal industry,” said Mark Britton, Avvo’s Chief Executive Officer. “Brad is simply the perfect addition to our team with his extensive operating experience, technological prowess and raw smarts. We are lucky to have him.”
Silverberg joins existing Avvo board members Rich Barton, chairman and CEO of Zillow, Inc. and a venture partner with Benchmark Capital, Paul Bloom, Avvo’s Vice President of Products and Marketing, and Britton.
“Ignition is excited to invest in what we believe will be a game-changing idea in the legal vertical,” said Silverberg. “Avvo has a tremendous team — the perfect mix of legal, consumer, and technology experience to help consumers navigate the legal industry.”
Before co-founding Ignition Partners, Silverberg was a senior vice president at Microsoft, where he served as a member of Microsoft’s nine-person Executive Committee. Responsible for driving all aspects of the Windows business, he grew Windows from a $50 million to a more than $3 billion business. He led the Internet turnaround at Microsoft and was responsible for Microsoft’s Internet platform, including Internet Explorer. In addition, he managed Microsoft’s developer and Office divisions before retiring from Microsoft in 1999.
About Avvo
Avvo is an Internet company dedicated to helping consumers better navigate the highly confusing legal industry. Founded in early 2006, Avvo is privately-held, with funding from private investors, Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners. For more information, visit www.avvo.com.
About Ignition Partners
Ignition Partners, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is a premier venture capital firm dedicated to helping the best entrepreneurs seize opportunity ñ from turning their early stage idea into a business, to hiring the right team, providing the right industry and functional insight and connections, and growing their business strategically, globally, and financially to realize the best ultimate outcome. Ignition invests in emerging and future leaders in communications, internet, software, and services across business and consumer targets. Ignition brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, technical expertise, and global operational experience. Ignition’s partners are proven business leaders who have built some of the world’s most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows and Office, McCaw Cellular Comunications, AT&T Wireless and Starbucks. For more information on Ignition Partners, visit its website at www.ignitionpartners.com
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital, a leading international venture capital firm, was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build successful technology companies. Benchmark’s general partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm’s portfolio companies. Benchmark’s portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Bebo, Infinera, MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. Managing more than $3.5 billion in committed venture capital, Benchmark has offices in Silicon Valley, Europe and Israel. For more information on Benchmark Capital, visit its website at www.benchmark.com.
