I first heard of Jive Software in November when they got a mention on John Cook’s venture blog at the Seattle P-I. They raised $15 million a few months prior, from Sequoia Capital no less.

They’re a competitor to SharePoint and you might remember how I feel about SharePoint. I love how Cook quotes Jive’s Sam Lawrence as saying SharePoint is a “Frankensuite”.

They’re at #7 on the February Portland Startup Index. They just got their 2,000th paying customer. They were recently named a runner-up in the 2008 IntranetJournal.com “Product of the Year” awards in the Collaboration category. They just added Tony Zingale of Mercury Interactive to their board.

Not too bad for a seven-year old company. I’m reminded of a recent post by David Rusenko of Weebly in which he talks about perseverance:

But you’ve got to keep with it to gain momentum. It doesn’t usually just build overnight, it takes time. Keep building your product, and eventually you gain momentum and a critical mass of people who know about you and tell others about you.

Keep it going, Jive!