Whitehouse opponent Hinckley sells firm

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Barry Hinckley is a wealthier man today than he was when he kicked off his challenge to incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse.

Bullhorn Inc., the Boston-based software company that Hinckley co-founded in 1999, was sold in June to Vista Equity Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, for well more than $100 million.

Hinckley declined to say how much he made in the deal, but acknowledged, "I did very well." He said Bullhorn's sale also bolsters his own ability to invest in the Senate race, noting he wrote his campaign a $100,000 check during the quarter ended June 30.

"I didn't have a lot of liquidity before the sale," Hinckley said. "I had my savings, which were limited. But I have a lot more flexibility now."

• Nesi: Hinckley has 'part-Democrat' platform

Bullhorn, an early software-as-a-service company, sells products that companies use to manage their relationships with potential employees and customers. The company reported a 40% increase in revenue last year and says it has more than 100,000 customers in 126 countries.

But it wasn't an overnight success. Hinckley and his two co-founders, Art Papas and Roger Colvin, struggled to keep the company afloat for their first four years as the dot-com bubble burst and firms remained reluctant to embrace software-as-a-service.

"Credit cards is how I started the company," Hinckley told WPRI.com. "When you don't have any money and you don't have any equity to leverage with the bank, what you have to do is go to venture capital, and they take a big chunk of the company."

"We ran out of money twice," he recalled. "Never missed a payroll, never missed a contribution to health care, nothing - we were always there for our people. There was a fair amount of time where we didn't get paid, and as a single dad it wasn't easy. But we got by. We had a couple real serious I would call, 'dirt patches' before 2003, when things started to pick up."

Hinckley left his job at Bullhorn at the end of 2009, a year after a venture capital firm took majority control, but remained a part-owner until he sold his stake as part of the Vista Equity Partners deal. According to Papas, the deal was in the works for about nine months.

"We met with them a number of times," he told Dow Jones. "It was sort of a courtship, I would say." One of the companies' previous investors, David Simon, added that Bullhorn "was on a number of folks' radars" because of its success.

Bullhorn's success gives Hinckley confidence he'll beat the odds and defeat Whitehouse in November, despite the incumbent's massive fundraising advantage and significant lead in a February WPRI 12 poll.

"Keep in mind, when I started my software company we had over 100 competitors," he said, "and my company is now No. 1 in the world by users and revenue."

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi's Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

Tim White contributed to this report.