Deal Radar 2008: Fabrik

Fabrik provides users with online services, software, and devices to help them better manage, store, share, and protect their digital content. The company’s core products are software and web services to offer data backup and content management, along with external hard drives.

Fabrik was founded in 2005 by Mike Cordano, who is also the CEO, and Keyur Patel, who now serves as chairman. The company is based in San Mateo, California. In September 2005, the company received $4.1 million in Series A funding led by ComVentures and Gunderson. Their Series B came in at $8 million in July 2006 and was led by ComVentures and Intel Capital. In February 2007 they received their Series C round of $14.3 million, led again by ComVentures and Intel Capital. Finally, in May 2007, Fabrik received a Series D round of $24.9 million in funding led by 3i and previous investor ComVentures. Total funding now stands at $51.3 million. The company has around 175 employees, with a strong presence in India. Keyur Patel is a partner at ComVentures, which has since changed its name to Velocity Interactive Group.

In 2006, Maxtor (one of the top hard drive companies) and Fabrik teamed up to make a simple and powerful way to change pictures, videos, and music, which may have been stored in different places, into a digital experience which can be stored or shared easily. That was around the same time Maxtor was being acquired by Seagate Technology.

In January 2008, Fabrik acquired G-Technology, which produces external drives, for an undisclosed sum. This is Fabrik’s third acquisition; the previous two were Filmloop and SimpleTech. Filmloop was acquired for $3 million in December 2006. The consumer business unit of SimpleTech, which provides hard disk drive-based external, portable network storage solutions, was acquired for approximately $43 million. The hardware products are available from various resellers including BestBuy, Circuit City, Buy.com, Amazon, etc.

According to TechCrunch, Fabrik is on a $200 million revenue run rate for 2008. Revenues from within the US make up 90% of this number.

An obvious acquisition for Fabrik would be to get bought by Seagate, given all the relationships already in place. Another interesting possibility would be for one of its resellers to buy the company to make it a private label business.

This segment is a part in the series : Deal Radar 2008