Shortly after I joined Wellington Partners in 1998 we started to invest in Digital Media companies. And it did not take long before the potential of mobile applications became an important part of many board room discussions. But it did take nearly a decade for their time to eventually come. It was the co-emergence of affordable data rates and the availability of user-friendly devices that paved the way for explosive growth of mobile applications. One important tipping point was the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Currently, countless enterprises, sport clubs, associations and even government agencies are developing and launching their own mobile services, and growth in consumer use of these applications has been dramatic. In our portfolio we see this, for example, in the success of the Qype Radar application and in the popularity of Aloqa’s location-based product set. Having lived through several false starts and seen what does and does not work, we are confident that the experience in the mobile field gained over the past 10 years will be helpful to our portfolio companies going forward.

Over the last decade we have experienced time and again the advantages of our long-term investment strategy and the need for staying power in our industry. True, for many of our successful portfolio companies, continuous progress has been a key ingredient for their ultimate breakthrough. And we have seen quick turnarounds in our portfolio, too. But to develop and launch successive product generations, to identify and bring key people on board, to create scalable entities, to grow global organisations, and build market leading, enduring companies simply takes time. The e-mail technology and marketing company eCircle has been no exception to this rule. It took Volker Wiewer and his management team 10 years to lead their company to the top of the European market. And our recent sale of the company to the US Investor TA Associates is far from being the end of the story. Quite the opposite, the e-mail marketing sector still offers tremendous growth potential, and I am sure that the eCircle team will continue to deliver strong growth and profits over the next years.