Andover firm expands worldwide presence with venture capital funding

By Bill Kirk
bkirk@eagletribune.com

January 11, 2009 01:12 am

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ANDOVER — A local high-tech company recently won $1.2 million in venture capital funding to help grow the business.

Aras Corp., a management software company at Brickstone Square, received the funding last year and has already used it to expand operations overseas, according to company president and founder Peter Schroer.

"This was a great time for us to go international," Schroer told Mass. High Tech Journal. "The U.S. economy is a little bit slow, and with this Web marketing model, we've got partners in Australia, China, Japan. How could you have ever afforded that kind of worldwide marketing before?"

The move has already paid off, he told The Eagle-Tribune this week, because the company experienced 65 percent growth in 2008 after 60 percent growth in 2007. He projects 70 percent revenue growth this year.

Schroer founded the company in Lawrence during 2000, starting at Heritage Place. Last year, the company, which employs 17 people in Andover and 35 worldwide, moved to Brickstone Square.

"We're doing well," he said. "We're growing. We're on the right track."

Schroer said the investors actually own part of the company and will be paid once the company has its IPO, or initial public offering of stock. There were no IPOs in Massachusetts last year, he noted.

"It's not a good market right now," he said, adding that the company will probably continue as a private company through 2009, hoping for an improvement in the IPO market in the future.