The document management company iManage has taken a strategic growth investment from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities in order to accelerate its organic growth and the continued evolution of its cloud-based platform, it said today.
This is a minority investment and iManage will continue to operate under the leadership of the existing management team, led by its CEO and co-founder Neil Araujo.
“The minority investment by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities will help iManage build on the increasingly important role it plays enabling knowledge-based organizations to work productively, improve information governance, optimize workflow, and collaborate seamlessly,” the company said in a statement.
Araujo said the investment is a “proud and pivotal moment in iManage’s history” and “a testament to the strength of the current business we have developed and the potential opportunity to grow and have a lasting impact.”
“Bain Capital brings a wealth of experience that will support the scaling of our vision and enable us to accelerate our already extraordinary growth trajectory while remaining focused on the needs and aspirations of our customers,” Araujo said. “I am truly excited for the future as we continue to deliver on our mission to transform, enable and support how knowledge workers get work done.”
Learn more about iManage on the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.
iManage says its customers span over 4,000 legal, accounting, and financial services organizations in more than 65 countries.
“Neil and his tenured management team have done an outstanding job building iManage into a global leader, helping the world’s leading organizations manage documents and email more efficiently while protecting vital information assets, meeting regulatory requirements, and improving workflows,” said Phil Meicler, a partner at Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
“The scale of our investment reflects our conviction in the iManage team, their vision and customer centric approach, and we are excited to partner with Neil and the team to help deepen and expand the product experience and continue to serve existing and new market opportunities.”
As I recounted in a 2021 interview with Araujo, after he and Rafiq Mohammadi cofounded iManage in 1995, it was acquired in 2003 by Interwoven for $171 million. In 2009, Autonomy acquired Interwoven for $775 million, and then in 2011 Hewlett Packard purchased Autonomy for $11.1 billion, getting iManage in the deal.
Unfortunately, for HP, the Autonomy acquisition turned into a fiasco due to alleged accounting improprieties by Autonomy, resulting in both litigation and a write-down of nearly $8.8 billion of the purchase price.
Amid this turmoil, the iManage leadership was able to buy out the company and its business from HP. Cofounders Araujo and Mohammadi returned to top leadership roles as CEO and chief scientist, respectively, and set to work on reinvigorating the core on-premises product and relaunching its cloud product, which it did in 2016 as iManage Cloud.
Since then, it has made several key acquisitions, including of UK artificial intelligence company RAVN Systems in 2017 and of legal transaction management company Closing Folders in 2020.
(See a brief demo video of iManage Closing Folders on the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.)
