Verdane Capital invests in Propellerhead becoming majority shareholder
Early this morning, Propellerhead Software announced that the company is bringing on board private equity fund Verdane Capital IX (Verdane) as a new partner. Verdane will support the company’s expansion in several areas around the core product Reason, the app store-model Rack Extensions and the mobile music-making platform.
This is indeed exciting news although while Ernst Nathorst-Boos will remain the CEO and the largest minority shareholder, this partnership might worry a major part of the Reason-community out there. We got a hold Of Mattias Häägström, Propellerhead Product Manager and asked him to elaborate on how this partnership will affect Reason as a product and what we can expect in the future:
“This basically means there will be more of the Propellerhead you know and love. We’re currently recruiting more people than ever before, but honestly we’d started that process even before this deal. We’ll continue to focus on Reason and our mission to help people all over the world realise their musical dreams—but we’ll do even more of it”
The article as printed in the Verdane Capital article about the partnership:
Propellerhead Software announced today that the company is bringing on board private equity fund Verdane Capital IX (Verdane) as a new partner. Verdane will support the company’s expansion in several areas around the core product Reason, the app store-model Rack Extensions and the mobile music-making platform.
Reason 9 was released in June 2016, the latest version of Propellerhead’s award-winning music production software, which helped drive record sales in 2016. The company has since released two updates for Reason supporting Ableton Live’s Link technology and further bolstered the Rack Extension platform via Reason 9.2.
Propellerhead is now focusing intensively on increasing the development team and pace, strengthening the company’s position in- and outside of the music industry and further developing their mobile music-making platform.
“We have revolutionized the music industry several times and now we want to take the next step in our vision, to give even more people the opportunity to create more and better music,” says Ernst Nathorst-Böös, CEO and founder of Propellerhead. “With Verdane’s help, we will be able to reinforce our focus on developing new products for the next generation of music makers.”
Verdane will become an active owner of Propellerhead. Verdane has extensive experience from driving growth in software and e-commerce companies, and will be a valuable partner as Propellerhead picks up the pace. Ernst Nathorst-Böös will continue to lead the company.
“Propellerhead is a vital part of the ‘Swedish music wonder’ phenomenon and possesses some of the leading expertise in the world of digital music software and digital sound processing,” says Pål Malmros, Partner at Verdane Capital Advisors. “We are excited about further strengthening Propellerhead’s leadership position in the market.”
