Archer Technologies Announces Strategic Relationship With Bain Capital Ventures

Archer and Bain Capital Partner to Enhance Archer's Leadership Within the GRC Marketplace and to Grow the Company's Global Presence

Archer Technologies, a provider of enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, today announced that the company has formed a strategic partnership with Bain Capital Ventures, which included a substantial investment of an undisclosed amount. As a strong and profitable leader in the enterprise GRC space, Archer will utilize growth capital from Bain to expand its sales team, increase its global presence and enhance its ability to deliver best-in-class solutions to more than six million licensed users worldwide.

Partnered with Bain Capital, Archer will continue to deliver out-of-the-box software solutions built on the flexible Archer SmartSuite Framework, providing the foundation for a successful enterprise GRC program for clients and partners within the financial services, telecommunications, retail, media, technology and healthcare industries, among others.

"Customers simply love Archer Technologies because it's the only solution that enables them to prove compliance rather than merely stipulate it. Archer's SmartSuite Framework reduces the costs of compliance and risk management by up to 90 percent," said Ben Nye, managing director for Bain Capital Ventures. "Based on our extensive due diligence with many of their key clients, we found that Archer is an extremely well-positioned, well-managed company with the most innovative approach to software delivery that we have seen in the market."

Following a period of active pursuit from a number of growth capital firms and software giants, Archer elected to enter into a strategic relationship with Bain Capital Ventures, which took a minority stake in the company. As one of the most respected growth equity firms in the world, Bain Capital Ventures is the Boston-based venture capital group of Bain Capital, whose affiliates manage over $80 billion of assets. Bain Capital Ventures has extensive experience in helping companies achieve rapid growth and become long-term leaders in their markets.

"This is an exciting time for Archer as we closed our strongest third quarter to date and look to surpass that record in the fourth quarter. Coupled with our 96 percent customer renewals since inception, the growth we've seen this year has been the greatest in our company history," said Jon Darbyshire, Archer president and CEO. "With a world-class partner in Bain Capital, we now have the opportunity to expand Archer's presence on a global scale, while maintaining our commitment to the success of our employees, whose talent and dedication to customer satisfaction have fueled our growth year after year."

According to Nye, "We looked at several companies in the GRC market and selected Archer based on its industry reputation, history of success and strong validation from customers, partners and the analyst community. Bain Capital's investment will provide fuel to Archer's already significant growth."

About Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures is the Boston-based venture capital group of Bain Capital, whose affiliates manage over $80 billion of assets. Founded in 1984, Bain Capital and its affiliates have invested in over 300 companies with such notable successes as Doubleclick, Gartner Group, Taleo, Profitic Logic, m-Qube and Staples. Bain Capital's history of investing in early stage companies dates back to 1984, having made over 120 venture-stage investments since inception. Since 2000, the dedicated venture group has focused exclusively on growth investments. Bain Capital Ventures currently has over $1 billion under management and invests in software, wireless, information-services, healthcare, technology-driven business services, retail, Internet and consumer businesses. Bain Capital Ventures makes investments across all stages of a company's growth: from providing seed capital through offering late stage growth equity.

About Archer Technologies

Archer Technologies delivers enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions. With more than six million licensed users and a client list that includes one in four of the Fortune 100, Archer enables highly regulated companies to reduce enterprise risks, manage and demonstrate compliance, automate business processes, and gain visibility into corporate risk and security controls.

All Archer solutions, including Policy, Asset, Threat, Risk, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Crisis, Incident, Vendor and Compliance Management, are built on the highly flexible Archer SmartSuite Framework, allowing clients to tailor the solutions according to their unique requirements and to build new on-demand applications to expand their enterprise GRC program. As a result, many of Archer's clients consider the Framework their go-to platform for rapid application development.

Archer clients maximize their use of the Framework through the Archer Exchange, an online marketplace of applications, services, content and integration solutions, and the Archer Community, an online social network of discussion forums, product ideas, downloads and resources. Through this supporting Archer ecosystem, clients have the tools and services they need to build a best-in-class enterprise GRC program. For more information, visit www.archer-tech.com.