Ready For Any Weather

It seems that this week everyone is talking about how an economic downturn will effect Silicon Valley. Case in point, today's NY Times article titled, "Credit Crisis Spreads a Pall Over Silicon Valley." I'll leave the financial health of Apple or Google up to the experts and say that Rearden Commerce is still growing like crazy. With a $100 million in fundraising this year, Rearden was recently cited by TechCrunch as one of the firms ready to weather a downturn.

Even more important than Rearden's $100 million is a business model with multiple revenue streams and a product that gives companies a platform to capture and reduce their business expenses. In tough economic times the impetus to manage employee spending only gets stronger. The dramatic growth of Rearden's customer and supplier base is a perfect testament to this. Additionally, Rearden's upcoming entry into the consumer market through a partnership with Chase (pdf) will further solidify the company's position as one of the tech companies ready to weather and even thrive in this tough economic climate.

Update 1/30/09: Despite Rearden's war chest and strong customer growth the comapny hasn't been imune to significant layoffs. In November the company had to layoff over 10% of their employees, including the majority of the marketing department, in an effort to reduce costs. Oddly, the compay is now reporting that they are hiring aggressivly including increasing R&D spending by 20%.