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Tower Cloud -- Backed by Noro-Moseley, Kinetic, Knology -- Reaches $25.5M - cbl
Posted August 13, 2010
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By citybizlist Staff
ATLANTA/WEST POINT -- Tower Cloud Inc. has closed on $25.5 million in an equity financing round, according to an amended SEC filing.
Investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, of Palo Alto, Calif.; Menlo Park, Calif.-based El Dorado Ventures; Ballast Point Ventures, of St. Petersburg, Fla.; Kinetic Ventures, with offices in Chevy Chase, Md., and Atlanta; Noro-Moseley Partners, of Atlanta; Tampa-based The Burton Partnership; and West Point, Ga.-based Knology Inc. and ITC Partners Fund I LP.
St. Petersburg-based Tower Cloud Inc., which was founded in 2006, provides mobile backhaul services to wireless carriers in the United States.
Principals named in the Reg D filing are CEO Ronald Mudry; CFO Thomas Guard; Patricia Morrison, vice president of finance and controller; George Townsend, vice president of operations and business development; and directors, David Coxe, Campbell Lanier III, Michael Irwin and Rodger Johnson.
Reg D filing: http://tinyurl.com/3xxaxtg
Bios from Tower Cloud's Web site:
Ronald Mudry - CEO
As CEO, chairman and president of Tower Cloud, Ron Mudry brings 27 years of experience in the telecommunications industry to the company. Ron was founding CEO of Progress Telecom (formed in 1998) where he created an industry-leading provider of fiber and backhaul services, he also led the negotiated sale of Progress Telecom to Level 3 Communications. Prior to his tenure with Progress Telecom, Ron spent 15 years with GTE Corporation (now Verizon) where he held key management positions in finance, sales and marketing, international operations, treasury, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions.
Ron has served as chairman of the CEO Council of COMPTEL (the leading industry association representing communications service providers and their supplier partners) and has been a speaker at number of regional and national industry events. Ron earned an M.B.A. from the University of Tampa and a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Michigan.
Thomas Guard - CFO
Tom Guard brings deep industry experience and leadership to Tower Cloud. With more than 20 years in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and accounting, Tom leads Tower Cloud's corporate finance and planning functions.
Before joining Tower Cloud, Tom served as senior vice president and treasurer of Global Signal where he was a member of the executive team that turned Global Signal from bankruptcy into one of the largest publicly traded wireless tower companies in North America.
Tom has significant experience in raising capital, including Global Signal's IPO that successfully raised $145 million and was one of the financial executives that negotiated and closed over $2.5 billion in debt transactions. Before joining Global Signal, Tom was vice president of finance at TMP Worldwide, a publicly traded international human capital management firm and then parent company of Monster.com. Tom began his career with Price Waterhouse as an auditor.
Tom is a Certified Public Accountant and earned an M.B.A. from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting from the University of Missouri.
Patricia Morrison - VP, Finance and Controller
Tricia Morrison brings more than 30 years of experience in financial administration to Tower Cloud including broad expertise in compliance, financial planning and strategy.
Tricia served as vice president of finance for Progress Telecom before joining the Tower Cloud team. In this role, she was responsible for all financial functions of the business including financial reporting, long-range planning, budgeting, cash management, procurement, taxation and regulatory compliance. Tricia led a number of successful business initiatives including a multi-million dollar renegotiation of property taxes, and led the financial integration process when Progress Telecom's business was acquired by Level 3. Tricia's experience includes an 18-year career with Florida Progress, a $10 billion dollar diversified electric utility acquired by Progress Energy in 2000. Tricia has also worked with public accounting firms that provided a range of financial services to small and medium-sized businesses.
A Certified Public Accountant and Certified Internal Auditor, Tricia earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of South Alabama and an M.B.A. from Florida Institute of Technology.
George Townsend - VP, Operations and Business Development
George Townsend's strength is creating deep relationships with wireless carries and other partners for Tower Cloud. With over 30 years experience in the telecommunications and utility industries, the success of George's savvy and authentic approach is proven by the company's tier one customer list and extensive partner base.
Prior to Tower Cloud, George served as vice president and general manager for Progress Telecom's wireless division, a group he founded in 1995. Under George's leadership, the business was highly profitability with strong revenue growth and a portfolio of over 400 cell sites. George negotiated master tower land lease agreements and MSA's with four tier one wireless carriers and three regional wireless carriers. Before joining Progress Telecom, George's 25-year history with Florida Power Corporation afforded him diverse experience in business development, finance and real estate.
George earned a bachelor degree in business administration from the University of South Florida.
Board of Directors
David Coxe
Managing Director of Sutter Hills Ventures
Tench Coxe focuses his investments in telecommunications hardware, application software, semiconductors, and payment infrastructure. Tench joined Sutter Hill Ventures in 1987 following his tenure with Digital Communications Associates in Atlanta, where he managed T1 products and directed internal MIS and marketing. Previously, he worked with Lehman Brothers in New York City, where he was a corporate financial analyst specializing in mergers and acquisitions as well as debt and equity financing. Tench graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in economics. He earned an MBA from Harvard University's Graduate School of Business.
Campbell Lanier III
Chairman of ITC Holding Company, LLC and Senior Director of Kinetic Ventures
Cam is an experienced Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of numerous public and private companies throughout the telecommunications and financial services industries. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Interstate Communications (Telecom*USA), which was acquired by MCI for $1.2 billion in 1990. Cam was the founding investor and Chairman of Powertel (now T-Mobile), which was acquired by Deutsche Telecom for $4.2 billion in 2000. He was also the founding investor for Mindspring, which was valued at $1 billion at the time of its merger with Earthlink, and the founding investor in Firethorn, a mobile payments company that was acquired in the fall of 2007 by Qualcomm for over $200 million. In addition, Cam was the founding investor of ITC^DeltaCom, Knology and InterCall.
Michael Irwin
General Partner of El Dorado Ventures
Scott Irwin joined El Dorado Ventures in 2000 and became a General Partner in 2005. He focuses on software and infrastructure investments. Prior to El Dorado, Scott held software engineering and product management positions with Accenture, where he developed and managed enterprise software products targeting the energy industry. His early career experience was with the communications systems division of Rockwell International, later acquired by Alcatel. Scott received a Bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Rodger Johnson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Knology Inc.
Rodger was appointed Chairman in 2008 and has served as CEO since 1999. Knology is a publicly traded (NASDAQ: KNOL) provider of cable TV, telephone and Internet services to residential and business customers in 12 markets. Earlier in his career, Rodger served as President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as a director, of Communications Central, Inc., a publicly traded provider of pay telephone services; President and Chief Executive Officer of JKC Holdings, Inc., a consulting company providing advice to the information processing industry; Chief Operating Officer of CareCentric, Inc., a publicly traded medical software manufacturer; and President and Chief Operating Officer of Firstwave Technologies, Inc., a publicly traded sales and marketing software provider. Rodger spent his early career with AT&T where he worked in numerous departments, including sales, marketing, engineering, operations and human resources. In his final role at AT&T, he directed the development of consumer market sales strategies.
Posted: Aug 13, 2010
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