Follow The Money: 13 Tech Venture Capital Investments In September
Show Me The Money
The weather has turned cooler, but venture capital activity in the IT industry remains hot. In September startups followed by CRN pulled in new rounds of financing ranging from between $2.9 millionand $3.4 million to as much as between $110 million and $120 million.
While security startups continue to be predominant, this month's crop of venture funding recipients includes a number of Software-as-a-Service application developers, Web content distribution companies, storage technology builders and digital marketing service providers. The 13 companies in this month's roundup pulled in just short of $550 million in total.
AnswerDash
Headquarters: Seattle
CEO: William Colleran
New Funding: $2.9 million
Round: Seed Round
Backers: Voyager Capital, WRF Capital, Summit Capital, the W Fund and Arnold Venture Group
AnswerDash develops customer support Software-as-a-Service tools that online customers use on a self-service basis, helping online businesses reduce support costs and increase conversion rates.
AnswerDash plans to use the funding to expand its sales and marketing teams and continue to develop its product.
Apptus
Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
CEO: Kirk Krappe
New Funding: $108 million
Round: Series C
Backers: Iconiq Capital, K1 Capital, KIA and Salesforce Ventures
Apptus is a provider of cloud-based applications for price quote configuration, e-commerce, contract management and revenue management tasks – all steps within the "quote-to-cash" sales cycle. The applications are built on the Salesforce 1 Platform, making Apptus part of the Salesforce.com ecosystem.
The new funding round follows a $41 million Round B of funding in February and an A round of funding worth $37 million in September 2013. Apptus will use the new funds to develop additional applications and services in specific industries such as life sciences, financial services, manufacturing and telecommunications.
CloudFlare
Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Matthew Prince
New Funding: $110 million
Round: Series D
Backers: Fidelity Management and Research Company, Google Capital, Microsoft, Baidu and Qualcomm Ventures
CloudFlare provides a content delivery network and distributed domain name server services that protect, speed up and improve the availability of websites and mobile applications.
Earlier this year, at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, CEO Prince said the company was on track to go public in 2017.
Exabeam
Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
CEO: Nir Polak
New Funding: $25 million
Round: Series B
Backers: Icon Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and private investor Shlomo Kramer
Exabeam develops user behavior analytics software for security applications. The technology leverages log data to detect advanced attacks, prioritize incidents and help determine an effective response. The startup launched its flagship product earlier this year.
Field Nation
Headquarters: Minneapolis
CEO: Mynul Khan
New Funding: $30 million
Round: Undisclosed
Backers: Susquehanna Growth Equity and earlier investors
Field Nation operates an online marketplace platform for contingent and on-demand workforce management. The system allows businesses to procure, manage, pay, report and optimize contingent labor, and helps independent contractors to market their skill sets and find new projects.
The company plans to use the additional funding to increase its product development, and expand its marketing efforts in both existing markets and into new vertical markets. The company also expects to more than double the size of its workforce with new hires in sales, marketing, product development and technology.
Hola
Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
CEO: Ofer Vilenski
New Funding: $17 million
Round: Series C
Backers: Iris Capital and existing investors and key industry figures
Hola operates the Hola CDN peer-to-peer video distribution network for publishers. By streaming video to users from multiple servers in parallel, according to the company, the network improves reliability and speed while reducing publishers' costs for delivering video.
Hola plans to grow its engineering and product teams with the new funding to continue building out its video network.
Infinite io
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
CEO: Mark Cree
New Funding: $3.4 million
Round: Venture Round
Backers: Chicago Ventures
Infinite io develops network-based storage controller technology that migrates inactive data to low-cost public or private cloud storage, a move the company said can reduce storage costs by up to 80 percent and improve the performance of actively used data.
The company plans to use the new funding to expand its customer support operations and support its go-to-market partners.
Netskope
Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.
CEO: Sanjay Beri
New Funding: $75 million
Round: Series D
Backers: Iconiq Capital, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and the Social + Capital Partnership
Netskope is a provider of cloud access security broker technology that gives businesses visibility into and control over sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud applications.
The company plans to use the new capital to expand its sales and marketing efforts and boost its research and engineering work. The company said that in the last year it has grown its customer base by 500 percent and its revenue by 600 percent.
Norse
Headquarters: Foster City, Calif.
CEO: Sam Glines
New Funding: $11.4 million
Round: Series A1
Backers: KPMG Capital and existing investors
Norse develops threat intelligence technology that financial, governmental and technology organizations use to block live cyberattacks. The Norse Intelligence network is a globally distributed early warning grid of sensors, honeypots, crawlers and agents that monitor threat activity and compute risks for specific IP addresses and URLs.
KPMG will offer the Norse service to clients through its global cybersecurity practice.
Phantom Cyber
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
CEO: Oliver Friedrichs
New Funding: $6.5 million
Round: Series A
Backers: TechOperators and Blackstone with participation from Rein Capital, NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson and Virtual Instruments CEO John Thompson
Phantom Cyber provides a security automation and orchestration platform that helps companies integrate their disparate security point systems and respond more quickly to cybersecurity threats.
Tanium
Headquarters: Emeryville, Calif.
CEO: David Hindawi
New Funding: $120 million
Round: Series G
Backers: TPG Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price Associates
Tanium provides security and systems management software that businesses use to secure, control and manage millions of system endpoints across an organization.
Tanium recently reported 200 percent year-over-year growth. The latest funding comes on the heels of a $52 million funding round in March, bringing the company's total funding to $262 million and its valuation to $3.5 billion.
Wayin
Headquarters: Denver
CEO: Scott McNealy
New Funding: $15.4 million
Round: Series D
Backers: U.S. Venture Partners, Workday co-founder David Duffield, SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, Wayin CEO Scott McNealy and an unidentified new investor
Wayin is a real-time digital marketing software and services company whose technology integrates Facebook, Twitter and Instagram content to help marketers and media companies identify social trends and generate consumer interest in their offerings. The company has grown year-over-year sales by 250 percent over the past two years.
ZScaler
Headquarters: San Jose
CEO: Jay Chaudhry
New Funding: $25 million
Round: Series D
Backers: Google Capital
This latest funding is a continuation of the oversubscribed Series D funding, bringing the total funding in the round to $110 million.
Zscaler markets its Security-as-a-Service platform that provides Internet security, next-generation firewalls, sandboxing, SSL inspection, antivirus, vulnerability management and granular control of user activity in cloud computing, mobile and Internet of Things systems.