NICE Systems has agreed to acquire Advent portfolio company Fizzback, a leading provider of real time customer experience management software, for approximately USD80m.

Advent Venture Partners’ team built a strong partnership with Fizzback, having backed its founder and CEO Rob Keve in late 2006, and becoming the company’s largest shareholder. Advent was instrumental in bringing important hires, customers, partners and advisors to the company, both in Europe and the US. The deal is expected to complete during autumn 2011.
The sale generated a multiple of over 5x Advent’s investment, and is the fourth exit by the Technology team in 2011. This exit underlines the team’s success in difficult market conditions, generating over 6x average returns across the four exits. In total the aggregate proceeds represent 1.7x the amount invested in Tech from Advent Private Equity Fund IV, with two thirds of the portfolio still to be realised.
Mike Chalfen, General Partner at Advent Venture Partners, says: “We back outstanding founder entrepreneurs to scale capital efficient businesses. We’re proud to have worked closely with Rob to build Fizzback to meaningful scale. Fizzback has blue-chip customers in three continents that use the service to collect and analyse over 150 million Fizzbacks. That’s an amazing achievement with only USD8m of invested capital. Fizzback’s combination with NICE to create a global leader is a hugely exciting step for the company.”
