Startup banking on numbers game

Healdsburg's Ridgely Evers began tinkering with technology as a kid, building radios from mail-order kits.

"Our house was filled with stuff I'd taken apart," he said. His first computer, a 1967 model, had 4 KB of memory.

Evers joined software maker Intuit Inc. when it had just 35 employees and led the team that developed QuickBooks, now the world's most popular accounting program.

Today, Evers is launching NetBooks, a next-generation software system that manages bookkeeping and other functions for small businesses. The Rohnert Park startup is taking on giants of the industry, including Mountain View-based Intuit, his former employer.

If he's worried about the competition, Evers, 56, doesn't show it.

"We should be able to build a billion-dollar company around this," he said. "Silicon Valley has done an extraordinarily bad job of serving this market."

While NetBooks has just 40 workers -- 20 in Rohnert Park -- it's going to grow quickly, Evers said. The startup will have 200 employees worldwide within a year, he predicted.

Not everyone shares Evers' optimism. NetBooks faces proven leaders in the market for business management software, said David Thomas, a technology expert with the Software & Information Industry Association, a Washington trade group.

"They're getting into the game a little late," Thomas said. "There are already a number of other players in that space."

NetBooks is different because it offers a complete management system for small business, Evers said.

While other small business software focuses on bookkeeping, NetBooks also manages sales, marketing, production, inventory, shipping, customer relations and other tasks.

"It's a breakthrough," he said.

NetBooks is software-as-a-service, an Internet-based delivery method that's changing the industry. NetBooks hosts the application and customers get access via the Web.

Businesses don't buy the software but pay NetBooks a fee to use it -- $200 a month for a business with five users.

Software-as-a-service has grown quickly as more businesses get broadband connections. The arrangement offers state-of-the-art security and customer support, Evers said.

"It's imprudent for companies to have mission-critical data living on premise," he said.

NetBooks puts a heavy emphasis on customer support, he said. "Every single person in support is a local employee of the company," Evers said. "We almost think of ourselves as a support company that has software."

Evers founded NetBooks in 2006 and earlier this year moved it into a 10,000-square-foot space at the former Next Level Communications building in Rohnert Park. So far, the company has raised about $9 million in venture capital.

NetBooks is now hiring in support and engineering, he said.

The idea for NetBooks grew out of Evers' experience in small business, he said. After leaving Intuit in 1993, he headed several Internet startups and launched a technology venture fund.

He went into the specialty food business after buying a Healdsburg ranch in 1983. Evers imported olive trees from Italy and began making award-winning oil.

Evers and his wife, Colleen McGlynn, own DaVero Sonoma Inc., a company that sells extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar and other specialty foods. They also founded Plaza Farms, a Healdsburg store that sells locally grown food.

"Small business is a market I really admire," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Steve Hart at 521-5205 or steve.hart@pressdemocrat.com.