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InfoDesk Receives $1M Investment to Help Publishers Solve the Billion Dollar Digital Distribution Problem
New York - (October 8, 2003) - InfoDesk, Inc. a leading provider of real-time, digital information distribution services and technology to publishers and corporations, announced today that it has secured a $1 million Series B Investment from Crossbow Ventures, a West Palm Beach based venture capital firm, to make its solution more widely available to publishers of digital products. Crossbow joins existing InfoDesk investors Integra Funding and The Associated Press.
“An investment from a firm of such quality and expertise is a great vote of confidence in the value of our solutions and the ability of our team,” said Sterling Stites, InfoDesk’s CEO. “The funding will provide InfoDesk with working capital to expand its strategic alliances and its sales organization to further the adoption of the company’s products and services in the U.S. market.”
“Proven products, highly skilled management, and market acceptance from leading news and information brands, such as the Associated Press, puts InfoDesk well in front of its competitors,” said Matt W. Shaw, the Crossbow partner that sponsored the investment. “Crossbow is impressed with how InfoDesk’s unique solution helps publishers solve a major problem by dramatically reducing the complexity and cost of distributing real-time information to any platform or application.”
“Digital distribution is one of the greatest challenges that publishers face,” asserts Mr. Stites. “The lack of cost-effective, easy-to-use distribution is hurting the industry overall.” Mr. Stites estimates that the U.S. publishers overspend at least one billion dollars each year distributing digital products. “It translates into higher prices to customers and is severely gating sales growth,” says Stites. “Most solutions are difficult and expensive to set up and maintain. If the information isn’t crucial to success, the average company simply won’t put up with the cost and constant technical challenges.”
Does InfoDesk have the answer? “We think we have a piece of it,” says Stites. “InfoDesk delivers information to customers in a usable format in real time. They can get any content they want including text and multimedia on a single screen. They can personalize it, filter it, search it, customize its look and feel, and use it in any application or on any device. Our software can be downloaded and installed in minutes. For publishers it makes their products more marketable by making distribution easier, less expensive and more reliable.”
InfoDesk will use the investment from Crossbow Ventures to develop additional distribution partnerships with systems integrators and Application Service Providers (ASPs). It will also develop programs to help publishers successfully transition distribution to the InfoDesk solution.
About InfoDesk
InfoDesk, Inc. (www.idsk.com) is a leading provider of real-time, digital content distribution services and technology to publishers and corporations. The company’s solution enables real-time distribution, over IP networks, of text, photographs, audio and video to a comprehensive range of devices and applications including desktops, enterprise applications and mobile devices, and automates multi-media publishing to Web sites. It supports a wide range of structured and unstructured data formats including popular XML and ANPA standards. It enables publishers to quickly customize and target content products to meet market and customer needs, and enables end-users to personalize real-time information and search for historical information. InfoDesk distributes information from the world’s leading information brands including the Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, Agence France Presse, Knight Ridder Tribune, Financial Times, Reed Business Information and many others.
About Crossbow Ventures
Crossbow Ventures Inc. (www.crossbowventures.com) is a West Palm Beach based venture capital firm managing $160 million on behalf of European and American institutions and individuals. Placing investments through two managed funds, Crossbow Equity Partners LP and Crossbow Venture Partners LP (a Small Business Investment Company, "SBIC"), our firm concentrates its lead investments in the Southeastern US and co-invests with a number of other venture capital funds across the US. Industry sectors include Information Technology, Telecommunications, Life Sciences/Healthcare and Financial Services/Transaction Processing.
Contacts:
Lynn Epstein
Chief Operating Officer
InfoDesk, Inc.
914-332-5940
lynn@idsk.com
Matt Shaw
Partner
Crossbow Ventures Inc.
561-838-9005
mshaw@crossbowventures.com
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