Sverica Capital Management, in partnership with Ross Beattie and Gerry Lawless, have acquired iWave Information Systems from its owner Jamie Hill. This acquisition marks Sverica’s third investment made from its fourth fund.
iWave is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that offers fundraising intelligence to healthcare, education, and non-profit organizations. iWave provides access to data and analytics to help prospect researchers, fundraisers, and other development professionals determine which donor prospects to ask, how much to ask for, and when to ask. The company’s “360 Search” capabilities allow subscribers to research individuals and companies across multiple datasets through one unified search and its batch analytics capabilities allow users to screen entire prospect databases at once. The company, led by CEO Gerry Lawless, was founded in 1991 and is based in Charlottetown, PEI (www.iwave.com).
According to Sverica, iWave has been one of the fastest growing prospect research software companies in North America over the past five years and currently serves more than 2,000 client organizations. “Gerry and the iWave team have built a great company that has experienced significant growth over the past five years while serving their clients with a powerful data-driven software solution. We are excited to partner with Ross and Gerry and reinvest back into the company to create new avenues of growth and opportunity for the company’s employees, customers, and partners,” said Jordan Richards, Managing Director at Sverica.
Sverica invests from $10 million to $40 million in US or Canadian-based companies with enterprise values under $100 million. Sectors of interest include IT & business services, healthcare services and high value industrial. Sverica was founded in 1993 and has raised over $700 million of capital across four funds. The firm has offices in Boston and San Francisco (www.sverica.com).
As part of this transaction, Ross Beattie is joining the company as Executive Director and Vice Chairman. He is the former CEO of HGS Canada, one of the largest business process outsourcing companies in Canada. “iWave has a great opportunity to build upon its momentum, and we are excited to partner with Sverica as we continue to grow. iWave is well positioned to become the leading provider of fundraising intelligence, and we look forward to leveraging Sverica’s experience in realizing that vision,” said Mr. Beattie.
“Partnering with Sverica will expand our capacity to deliver the best value for our client organizations, provide rewarding careers for our team members and create value for our stakeholders,” said Mr. Lawless. “Most importantly, this will position us to build on our long-term strategy to produce a category leading-company that fundamentally changes the way nonprofits find major gifts to support their great causes.”
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | June 21, 2017
