This time in '99: Atlas gives IT start-ups a lift

Eight months after its launch, Atlas Venture provided funding for online natural health remedies company, ClickMango.com. Atlas then joined Marks & Spencer Financial Services in backing online car venture, OneSwoop.com.
This is how the original story broke on 25 February, 1999:

Venture capitalist firm, Atlas Venture, has announced a $400m fund for IT start-ups.

The company expects to invest around half the fund in Europe and half in the US, although there is no fixed allocation. "We've found that these days, we get equal returns from our European and US investments," commented Christopher Spray, a principal analyst at Atlas Venture.

The money will be invested in anything related to the digital economy - from electronic commerce to data and mobile technologies from enterprise software and chip manufacturing.

Spray told Silicon.com that the data communications market in particular is losing its US focus. "The old data market was 90 per cent based in the US. But as the European market moves from LANs and WANs to public data networks, it is gaining 50 per cent of the global market," he said.

Atlas Venture's previous investments include Business Objects, which was the first French software company to float on Nasdaq, and Vermeer, which developed FrontPage before selling it to Microsoft.