Borealis Ventures is pleased to announce the launch and funding of Vico Software ("Vico"), a provider of software and services to the building construction industry. Borealis led the funding that launched Vico by spinning out the Construction Solutions Division of Graphisoft SE, the industry pioneer in "virtual construction." Vico serves customers in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East from its headquarters in Boulder, Colorado and its additional operations in Boston, Helsinki, Budapest, and London.

Vico's award-winning Virtual Construction offerings enable building owners, general contractors and construction managers to reduce risk, manage costs, and optimize schedules on large, complex building projects. The Company is led by Borealis Entrepreneur-in-Residence Mark Sawyer as President/CEO. Mark brings with him deep experience in the engineering software industry including his recent role as President and CEO of former Borealis portfolio company @Last Software, where he led the successful merger between @Last and Google in March 2006, and earlier stints at Graphisoft and Autodesk.

Borealis' Jesse Devitte commented, "This is a sweet-spot opportunity for Borealis. We're backing an entrepreneur with whom we've succeeded before and he's leading a team with whom he has worked closely before. The Company already has proven products and increasing market traction in an industry we know very well. We look forward to working closely with the Vico team in advancing Vico's Virtual Construction offerings and reshaping the industry's landscape."

Borealis Ventures welcomes Chris Randles to the team as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Chris is actively working as a member of the Borealis investment team by reviewing new opportunities and advancing new start-up company ideas as part of our investment thesis in the application and engineering software markets.

Chris brings to Borealis over 25 years of software industry experience, starting with technical roles in engineering computing, and progressing to senior sales, marketing and general management positions in the US and Europe for such application and enterprise software companies as Olivetti, Lotus, Software Publishing, and Mathsoft, where he was CEO until its sale earlier in 2006 to PTC (Parametric Technology Corp.). Along the way, Chris has contributed successfully to both new and established enterprises, and has managed businesses at all stages of development - startup, turnaround and profitable growth - with a strong commitment to global strategy.

Chris kicked-off his role at Borealis by joining Jesse Devitte in April 2007 at the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES), where Jesse was giving a keynote address. This yearly conference brings together the best minds of the worldwide engineering software industry. The Borealis team used this conference platform to call for the industry to reorganize itself to meet the challenges and opportunities of increasing globalization. Using Thomas Friedman's best seller The World is Flat for his premise, Jesse argued that globalization has been a catalyst for the rise of the individual - an empowering phenomenon severely overlooked by most of the engineering software industry and one that has significant impacts for the technology companies that service these customers.