Dolphin Equity Partners recorded one of the largest single returns for limited partners among venture capital investors in 2009 and the largest sale of a privately held Cloud Computing company with its fourth-quarter sale of longtime investment Gomez Inc. to Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ:CPWR), firm President Richard Brekka said at today’s annual limited partner meeting.

Compuware’s $295 million cash acquisition of Gomez realized $93 million for Dolphin investors, a 770 percent return. Dolphin was Gomez’s largest shareholder and first invested in the company in 2000, when it saw an opportunity to build on Gomez’s nascent Web-performance monitoring assets and its then-pioneering delivery via the Software as a Service model.

“Dolphin is committed to looking for long-term investment opportunities that have huge potential payoffs, especially among SaaS technology providers,” Brekka said. “With our hands-on approach to helping find and support the right management teams, we’ve been able to create some truly innovative companies that have delivered real returns for our investors.”

The Gomez acquisition is the latest in a series of increasingly high-quality exits for Dolphin portfolio companies over the past few years, including Enpocket (sold to Nokia in 2007) and MaxPreps (sold to CBS in 2007).

Other Dolphin highlights for 2009:

• Dolphin made strategic follow-on investments in portfolio companies Mobile Armor, SeaPass, Silver Carrot, AVST, Touch Commerce and Overtone.
• TeraGo (TSX: TGO), one of Dolphin’s investments that went public in Canada in 2007, reported its fifth consecutive quarter of EBITDA improvement, maintaining the steady growth path that is a hallmark of Dolphin’s vision for its portfolio companies.
• The firm was heavily involved in filling key senior-level management positions for two of its portfolio companies: Michael Menegay, CEO at Mobile Armor, and Rick Pontin, president and CEO at Airband.

Dolphin has a proven track record at getting involved, working hard and sticking with pioneering companies to bring them along, maintaining firm cost controls that both facilitate expansion while also maintaining capital on a go-forward basis, according to Partner Adam Greene.

“We’ve had three very strong returns in difficult times because of our patient and persistent approach,” added Partner Dennis O’Connell.