June 11, 2007 By WealthMonitor

Conduit could be acquired; might seek additional equity to grow aggressively, founder and CEO says

Ronen Shilo, CEO and founder of Israel-based Conduit, said he is examining his exit strategy while considering selling additional equity to grow. The 48-year-old entrepreneur, who previously started Effective-I and DoubleAgent, said he is concentrating on his day-to-day role of continuing growth but that an exit is always a consideration.

His last company, DoubleAgent, was acquired by NetManage. The company was founded in 2005 by Shilo and an undisclosed partner. Since then they have received a small amount of funding from an Israeli venture capital firm. Shilo said he would consider additional equity although Conduit is not actively seeking it.

Conduit is a toolbar publisher that allows users to distribute their own toolbars on websites. Shilo said the company partners with Google. It gains a new customer every two seconds, and doubles its revenues every quarter. Although Shilo would not discuss revenues, he said the company had 25 million searches a month which generate anywhere from USD .05 to USD 10 for the company. At a minimum, according to those figures, annual revenues would be USD 15m.

Shilo said the company is, "blessed" with numbers considering how big the web is and how "essential" toolbars are.

In his free time, Shilo enjoys playing tennis, watching movies, and spending time with his wife and three kids.