Calico Technology Inc, San Jose-based provider of interactive marketing software and services, said it has raised $11m in a round of mezzanine financing led by Worldview Technology Partners. Also involved in the funding were Amerindo Investment Partners, Hambrecht & Quist, Merrill Lynch, and all of Calico’s previous investors; Integral Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the Mayfield Fund. The financing is the last round before the company files to go public, according to its chief financial officer. Calico, which bought interactive marketing encyclopedia developer FirstFloor Software Inc in June (CI No 3,440), plans to use the funds to finance additional acquisitions and for research and development purposes. The money will also be used to fund international expansion, the company said. It recently opened offices in the UK, and plans to move into other European and Asian markets in the near future. Thus, Worldview, which has extensive experience in leading companies into Asia, was seen by Calico as an opportune VC firm to lead the round. Calico provides point-of-sale software for internet commerce sites and claims heavyweights Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Computer Corp and Gateway Inc as customers. The company says its eSales Suite enables vendors and distributors to analyze requirements, access marketing data, configure sales systems, develop quotations, generate proposals, and place orders using the internet or intranets. Future acquisitions would be based on a roadmap the company is working on which will look at its technology by component and determine whether certain needs would be better filled by development or a purchase – a build or buy strategy. Although no specific acquisitions were discussed, Calico said possible targets would be in the area of enabling technologies or possibly a services business. Deals would likely be stock transactions, with the cash pile acting as a buffer against new possessions that are cash-flow negative.