MIT Trustees Invest In Westford's FolderWave
FolderWave, Inc., a Westford IT firm that provides cloud-based services to secondary and higher education clients, has received a financial boost from two Massachusetts Institute of Technology trustees.
FolderWave President Bob Burke declined to disclose the amounts, but said the funding, provided by James A. Champy and Susan E. Whitehead, both prominent business leaders as well as MIT trustees, is significant and will be used to beef up FolderWave’s sales and marketing operations.
Investors A Perfect Fit For FolderWave
Champy is former chairman of Perot Systems Corp., which was acquired by Dell, Inc. in 2009, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Reengineering the Corporation.”
Whitehead is vice chairwoman of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a renowned biomedical research firm, and an attorney active in a number of community service organizations.
“Both of these people, if we could draw up the kind of people we want to engage...it would be them,” Burke said, of FolderWave’s first external investors.
To date, FolderWave has been self-funded. Burke and his partner, CEO Bruce Ryan, who founded the company with Burke in 2000, have successfully marketed their cloud-based services, which manage processes like admissions and financial aid applications, for 13 years. But Burke said they reached a sales plateau, which prompted them to look for cash outside the business to grow their sales force.
“We were at a point where we really needed to get our name out there and look for more opportunities,” Burke said.
President Expects 25-Percent Growth
With 16 employees, Burke said he expects the company to grow about 25 percent, thanks to the new funding.
And FolderWave’s reach is expected to grow, too. Most of the company’s roughly 2,000 clients are located in the northeastern United States, though FolderWave recently added Ohio’s Wittenberg Univesity and Tulane University in New Orleans to its client roster. It’s also implementing services for Carnegie Mellon University’s Middle East campus in Qatar. The company is now setting its sights on clients in big states, like Illinois, Florida, Texas and California, according to Burke.
Champy and Whitehead each said in a statement that FolderWave’s cloud-based capabilities are meeting the rising technology expectations among students, as well as administrators and donors.
Image source: Freedigitalphotos.net
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