$14.5 million worth more than the money to Omniture

So why accept $14.5 million in venture capital funding if your company has had 12 consecutive quarters of growth and six straight quarters of profitability?

Better yet, why accept $14.5 million in VC dollars if on top of continued growth and profitability you've got sufficient money in the bank to keep the company going forward?

Why? Because you can — more importantly because the $14.5 million was smart money.

That's the quick answer as to why Orem-based Omniture closed on a $14.5 million B round of VC funding last week, led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (with support from individual investors who had previously invested in Omniture).

If you don't know the Hummer Winblad name, San Francisco-based HWVP has more than $1 billion under management, and it was the first VC to decide to focus its investment efforts specifically on software companies.

To date, Hummer Winblad has had more than 60 "liquidity events" with its portfolio of companies, either through public offerings or mergers/acquisitions.

And although HWVP has been very quiet on the investing front for close to two years as the DotCom implosion sorted itself out, it now appears that Hummer Winblad is "back in the game" once again.

The HWVP investment in Omniture appears to be the fourth (and largest) single Hummer Winblad equity investment since January 1 (and perhaps since late 2002).

With the investment, Mark Gorenberg, an HWVP partner, will be added to the Omniture board of directors.

With Gorenberg and the Hummer Winblad cachet, Omniture now gets access to the HWVP Rolodex of contacts, along with the expertise of nearly 15 years of investing acumen. That's why one agrees to accept $14.5 million in funding even if you really don't need the money.

What's interesting is that VCs have been pursuing Omniture for more than a year now, looking to invest in the Web analytics firm.

It appears, however, that things came to a head after the company brought John Mellor on board as the company's new vice president of marketing.

Not necessarily a "stop the presses" type of hire, although I've known Mellor for a long time and he knows his stuff when it comes to tech marketing.

No, what was apparently important from a funding standpoint is that Mellor already knew Gorenberg, having worked previously at Viewpoint DataLabs, a company Hummer Winblad had invested in before Computer Associates purchased Viewpoint.

So although I had to push Mellor to get him to admit it, it appears the HWVP connection with Omniture was not made until after the Mellor hire.

Interesting, huh? Hard to believe that adding one person to a company can lead to a $14.5 million investment in less than six months.