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Crawford Capital Corporation (CCC) has been assisting early
stage companies in raising capital since 1990.
Paul Crawford
is both a venture capitalist and an entrepreneur and has been
working with developing business since the late 70's. Crawford
Capital is ranked as the 8th largest Twin Cities
based Venture Capital Firm in the most recent 2010 Edition of
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. These rankings
are based on the total capital raised by all reporting firms
from their inception through December 31, 2009. Crawford
Capital's total at that time was 200+ million.
In addition to raising capital, Paul Crawford has started
several successful businesses including Celcom. Celcom was
incorporated in Minnesota in 1981 specifically to acquire
the first non-wireline cellular license in the first phase
of the first U.S. cellular phone systems. The initial cellular
licenses in the top 75 U.S. cities where opened to all filers
who were then submitted to a series of Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) comparative hearings which is similar to
how the F.C.C awards radio and television licenses. The balances
of the U.S. cellular markets were subsequently placed via
a lottery.
The deadline for the initial filings in the top markets
was closed in early 1982. Celcom ended-up in a joint venture
with MCI. The Twin Cities cellular system operated as MCI/Celcom
and subsequently was renamed Cellular One of the Twin Cities.
In 1986 MCI/Celcom sold the Twin Cities non-wireline cellular
system to McCaw Communications for approximately $43 million.
In July 1998 Paul Crawford co-founded Commission Junction (CJ).
CJ became very profitable in early 2002 and was acquired in December
2003 by ValueClick (VCLK) in a $58 million cash and stock transaction.
CJ is the leader in what is know as affiliate marketing/pay-per-sale
advertising on the Internet. Today they produce gross profit margins
in excess of 75% and continue to produce double-digit revenue growth.
Starting in late 2007 Paul Crawford started focusing on the next
generation of the Internet which is a "sea change event" that is
underway today. Crawford Capital's portfolio today is dominated by
Software as a Service (SaaS) services and 4G, Mobile WiMAX. He
predicts that, thanks to the evolution of "The Cloud" which has
unleashed huge power that cost billions to create that now is
is a resource that can propel very small ideas into multi-million
and even billion dollar enterprises in just a few years. A simple
but compelling example of this is the fact that in less than 3 years
the IPhone App's (applications) have become a $4.3 billion business
for Apple that will scale to $8 billion by the end of 2012.
Crawford Capital's current portfolio includes six SaaS businesses:
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