Ravello Systems CEO Rami Tamir and chairman and president Benny Schnaider are what have become known as serial entrepreneurs. Ravello is the sixth company they have founded over the past two decades, preceded by Fantom (sold to Cisco Systems for $118 million in 1999), which facilitated fiber-optic data transmission; P-Cube (sold to Cisco for $202 million in 2004), which developed a data traffic management solution; Schnaider's B-Hive (sold for $50 million to VMWare in 2008); Qumranet (sold for $107 million to Red Hat in 2008), which developed virtual solutions; and Schnaider's Traffix (sold for $140 million to F5 in 2012), which provided high-speed communications services. Now comes their biggest deal so far the sale of cloud computer developer Ravello to Oracle Corp. for an estimated $500 million.
According to the data from the Registrar of Companies, Tamir and Schnaider each own 13% of Ravello's share capital, which means that they will each receive $65 million from the sale of the company to Oracle, after having made tens of millions of dollars on the above-mentioned deals for their previous companies. The largest shareholder in Ravello with a 23.6% stake is Norwest Venture Partners, followed by Sequoia Capital with 23.3%. One equally familiar private investor is former Mercury Interactive CEO Amnon Landan, who owns 1.3%, meaning that he will receive $6 million.
When "Globes" interviewed Tamir and Schnaider in 2008, Tamir commented on the serial sale of companies by Schnaider and him, saying, "When you look at us from outside, it looks like we founded a company three years ago, and sold a company three years before that. What happened during those three years is an entire epic, in which things are completely different. We don't always plan to sell a company, although it looks that way. Someone told us, 'I knew you'd sell, and I also knew what the price would be,' but nothing was planned in advance."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 23, 2016
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016