The economy may be slowing, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for Adaptive Planning, which develops web-based business performance management (BPM) software. This week, Adaptive Planning announced a $10 million venture capital round. Its investors include RBC Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, Monitor Ventures, and ONSET Ventures.

Adaptive is in a hot industry. Other players in the space have already agreed to massive buyouts, notably SAP (NYSE: SAP)'s acquisition of BusinessObjects and IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s purchase of Cognos.

Adaptive's focus is primarily on the small- to mid-sized market (SMB) space. "We think the market opportunity is wide open," said William Soward, the CEO of Adaptive Planning, in an interview with me. "By using subscriptions and an on-demand platform, we think we have a strong competitive position."

Another key: Adaptive Planning has a usable free version, which has been a great vehicle to upsell prospective customers.

Interestingly enough, Adaptive Planning may actually thrive in the slowing economy. "Our software helps companies improve their forecasting, reporting and budgeting," said Soward. "Such things are important in getting efficiencies from a business."

If you want to check out other VC deals, visit DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

I'm on the subscriber list of FierceMarkets.com, which is a good way to keep up-to-date on the latest headlines. The site is based on advertising and lead generation (although, I can't remember actually clicking an ad).

The website's parent company, FierceMarkets, has decided to sell out. The buyer is Questex Media Group, a business-to-business media company. The price tag was not disclosed.

FierceMarkets was smart to build a diversified platform – across life sciences, telecom and so on. No doubt, industry verticals can run into slow times.

What's more, this is also a validation of email marketing. FierceMarkets has found a smart way to build communities, especially those with big influencers. The company has a base of over 560,000 executives in over 100 countries.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Back in 2000, Verticalnet (NASDAQ: VERT) was a dot-com darling. In fact, I knew several of the key people there – and, yes, they got suddenly very rich (and I've never heard from them since). At one point, Verticalnet was worth in excess of $12 billion.

Basically, the company was a business-to-business (B2B) platform, covering diverse areas like chemicals, logistics, and so on.

If you talked to the analysts back then, the B2B market was expected to be huge. Somehow, companies across the globe would glom onto these networks. In a sense, it was the emergence of a new form of Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NDAQ).

Well, things didn't turn out so well. Last week, Verticalnet sold out for a mere $15.2 million. The buyer is BravoSolution, which is part of Italcementi (a large cement company based in Italy).

Despite this, the B2B business is still a viable thing. For example, Compuware has a thriving business in this sector. Other players include Ariba (NASDAQ: ARBA) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).

But, of course, things are much more tempered now, showing once again that disrupting industries is pretty tough.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.