MailFrontier Secures $10 Million in Series B Financing
Oversubscribed Round for Anti-Spam Software Leader Led by Menlo Ventures
Sonja Hoel Joins Board

Palo Alto, Calif., August 18, 2003  – MailFrontier, the leading provider of anti-spam solutions for enterprises and individuals, today announced the closing of $10 million in Series B financing led by Menlo Ventures. Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) both participated in the round. Sonja Hoel, managing director at Menlo Ventures has joined MailFrontier’s board of directors.

“We are thrilled to have Menlo Ventures on board as we continue to face tremendous growth in enterprise sales,” said Pavni Diwanji, CEO and co-founder of MailFrontier. “Sonja is a veteran investor in the security and anti-virus markets. Her experience was a deciding factor in our choice to partner with Menlo Ventures as we set out to transform continued sales success into sustainable growth and  profitability,” said Diwanji.

With spam now estimated to account for almost 50% of all email traffic, and legislation being slow to deter offenders, technology is the most effective weapon for businesses and individuals to use in the war against junk email. However, many over-zealous software solutions have contributed to the problem of so-called “false positives”: when good email is incorrectly tagged as junk and then either lost forever or incredibly hard to retrieve. Unlike other solutions that simply claim low false positives, MailFrontier pioneered an approach that ensures no email is ever lost by giving users a quick and easy way to verify all messages before any get deleted. 

“MailFrontier captured our attention because of their impressive track record in signing enterprise customers,” said Sonja Hoel, managing director at Menlo Ventures. “This, combined with a solution tailored to the needs of each user and the vocabulary of each company, led us to believe that MailFrontier will be one of the clear winners in this emerging market,” said Hoel.

It has been less than six months since the launch of MailFrontier Anti-Spam Gateway and the company has secured over 80 enterprise customers. These include publicly-traded technology companies CDW Corp. and Marimba, as well as the Bellingham, Wash. School District, and the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), the state's largest electricity and natural gas provider.
Founded by Pavni Diwanji and Brian Wilson, MailFrontier closed its $5 million series A round of funding in August 2002. Combining this with the Series B round, MailFrontier has now raised $15 million in VC funding.

MailFrontier’s desktop anti-spam product, MailFrontier Matador, was launched in the Fall of 2002 and is available for $29.95 from www.mailfrontier.com. MailFrontier Anti-Spam Gateway™ is available for large enterprises and is sold on a per seat license basis.
About MailFrontier:

MailFrontier www.mailfrontier.com is at the forefront of providing next-generation messaging security products that make email communication more productive and secure in the work place. High volumes of unwanted email are crippling enterprise productivity today. MailFrontier offers innovative products to eliminate spam, including MailFrontier Anti-Spam Gateway™ and MailFrontier Matador™, utilizing the latest in junk mail blocking technologies, suitable for enterprises and individual users.

MailFrontier software products protect users’ mailboxes proactively, automatically learning about people and topics that are important to them and devising a set of dynamic, personalized preferences. Leveraging a combination of wide-ranging blacklists, intelligent content filters, a global reporting network, and a groundbreaking sender verification process, MailFrontier is uniquely positioned to guard mailboxes from junk email. MailFrontier’s enterprise customers include publicly-traded technology companies CDW Corp. and Marimba, as well as the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM).


About Menlo Ventures:
Menlo Ventures is a dedicated team of investment professionals with a broad range of experience in technology, marketing, sales and general management. Since 1976, Menlo Ventures has helped visionary leaders turn technical innovations into world-class companies. Many of these companies have become leaders in their respective markets, including LSI Logic, UUNET Technologies, Xros, Cyras Systems, Hotmail Corporation, Ascend Communications and Clarify.


NOTE: MailFrontier, the MailFrontier logo, Matador, and eProfile are trademarks of MailFrontier Incorporated.