It's never a good sign when a company doesn't disclose its investors. There may be a perfectly good reason why they don't want to say who invested... Actually, wait a minute. No, I can't really come up with one.

So, when Seven Networks said this week it took $42 million in a fourth round of venture financing from new and previous investors, it seemed suspicious that Seven vice president of marketing and products Ari Backholm would not say who the new backers were.

About all he would tell The Deal is that the previous investors accounted for a majority of the new round. This means equity stakes couldn't have been shaken up that much since the e-mail software company filed to go public two years ago. At that time, Ignition Partners owned 25.4%, Greylock Partners held 10.7%, Softbank 10.3%, and Saints Capital had 7.8%. At the time, Seven founder Bill Nguyen retained 32.2% of the stock.

If I had to guess, it sounds like Advanced Equities went to their broker network and got high net worth individuals to pour some new money into Seven. Either way, the previous investors must be stunned that new money is willing to help them fund this until a corporate acquirer is willing to take it off their hands. The company has now raised more than $100 million in venture money. Will any more be needed to achieve liquidity?

For more on the Seven deal, see:
The Deal
Seven press release
alarm:clock

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