Follow The Money: 10 VC Investments To Watch In August
Show Me The Money
August venture capital activity was punctuated by a few rather large investments for some seasoned startups.
These were deals over the $100 million mark, begging the question of whether the industry is set to soon see some IPOs.
There were also capital infusions with more modest funding rounds that spoke to the continued focus on big data and security.
Click through to see who managed to raise money this month and how those companies plan to put their new funding to use.
Nutanix
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Dheeraj Pandey
New Funding: $140 million
Round: Series E
Backers: Newest backers are undisclosed but described as Boston-based, reportedly Fidelity and Wellington
Nutanix turns five in September, but it got an early birthday gift with its largest funding round to date. The $140 million Series E financing now values the company at more than $2 billion. So why not file for an IPO? Nutanix Chief Dheeraj Pandey explained in an Aug. 27 blog post "by staying private for another year or so, if we could take really good care of our employees, customers and partners, we'd have built the foundation of a company that will take really good care of its investors when it's public." The hyper-converged hardware developer said the latest funding will go toward product innovation, sales, marketing, distribution and design. Dheeraj wrote in his blog, "… we will be heads-down building the character of this company."
Glassbeam
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
CEO: Puneet Pandit
New Funding: $2 million
Round: Seed funding
Backers: Led by VKRM Group
New funding for Glassbeam came with news that Kumar Malavalli will take a more active role with the company he co-founded as its chief strategy officer. Malavalli is also co-founder and former CTO of Brocade Communications Systems and more recently led InMage, another company he launched, which Microsoft bought in July. The company also added Sashi Reddi, managing partner of venture fund SRI Capital, to the machine data analytics firm's board. Reddi brings additional industry experience as founder and former CEO of AppLabs, which Computer Sciences Corp. bought in 2011. The recent funding brings the company's seed total to $8.1 million to go to the Internet of Things platform Glassbeam SCALAR.
Electric Imp
Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.
CEO: Hugo Fiennes
New Funding: $15 million
Round: Series B
Backers: Foxconn Technology Group, PTI Ventures, Rampart Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Hugo Fiennes
The impetus for cloud service and hardware solution provider Electric Imp started with a bathroom remodeling project. Founder and CEO Hugo Fiennes wanted to light the floor with RGB lights connected to Wi-Fi so they could display weather, stock prices and other information. So Fiennes decided to create a networking platform that's now used by companies representing 15 verticals, including health care and energy management. The latest funding follows an $8 million Series A round closed in 2012.
Lookout
Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Jim Dolce
New Funding: $150 million
Round: Series F
Backers: L ed by T. Rowe Price Associates along with Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Wellington Management Company, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions, Mithril Capital Management, Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz
The list of backers in Lookout's latest funding round is telling. The mobile security solution provider managed to nab a Who's Who of Silicon Valley VCs along with big-name banks. But interest in the company's mobile security platform also speaks to the continued growing importance of security offerings. Lookout is set to open its fourth office in Boston in the next 12 to 18 months. The 16,000-square-foot facility is being dubbed its Technology Development Center and will employ as many as 50 workers.
Push Technology
Headquarters: London, with U.S. headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Sean Bowen
New Funding: More than $5 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Leopard Rock Capital, among other investors
Push Technology is laying the groundwork for a stronger presence in the U.S. Its new funding should help with those plans. The company has new U.S. headquarters in San Jose, along with a New York office the company said is generating one-third of its new business. Push also said it expects to grow its overall employee head count by about 30 percent. The new office was a strategic move to grow Push's Bay Area business amid the recent launch of its Diffusion 5.0 data distribution solution.
Windsor Circle
Headquarters: Durham, N.C.
CEO: Matt Williamson
New Funding: $5.25 million
Round: Series B
Backers: Led by Comcast Ventures, and included IDEA Fund Partners, Triangle Angel Partners and AOL founder Steve Case
Customer loyalty programs are way past hole punches on a rewards card. That's where companies such as Windsor Circle come in. It makes retention software for e-commerce stores that help e-tailers gather customer data used to personalize marketing messages. Windsor Circle said its latest funding will help it move into new verticals. The company, which rolled out its product to market in 2011, said it has nearly 200 retail customers, including Bonobos, CafePress Services and SurfStitch.
Pivot3
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
CEO: Ron Nash
New Funding: $12 million
Round: Series E
Backers: Led by S3 Ventures, along with InterWest Partners and Mesirow Financial
Hyper-converged infrastructure provider Pivot3 continues to raise money as it scales the business.
Pivot3 counts more than 1,000 customers throughout the world that use its software. The latest funding, set for product development, came on the heels of an update to the operating system of Pivot3's vSTAC technologies, called vSTAC OS 6.5. The company's also been working on its back-end operations with improvements to its supply chain and customer service in May. Mike Dansby also was hired recently as vice president and CFO.
Platform9
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
CEO: Sirish Raghuram
New Funding: $4.5 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Redpoint Ventures
August was good for Platform9. The startup, founded by former VMware engineers, came out of stealth mode. It raised $4.5 million and rolled out its cloud-based management tool. The company launched with the "goal of reimagining how private data centers could be managed," Co-Founder and CEO Sirish Raghuram said in a statement. Aside from big engineering muscle in its founding team, Platform9 also boasts Meraki founder Hans Robertson and former VMware executive Bogomil Balkansky among its advisers.
Adatao
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
CEO: Christopher Nguyen
New Funding: $13 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Andreessen Horowitz, along with Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bloomberg Beta
Adatao's executive team has clocked experience at a number of big names, including Google, Yahoo and Amazon. The two-year-old big data startup bills itself as the "missing puzzle piece that bridges the gap between big data 1.0 of the past five years and big data 2.0." It's headed up, and was co-founded, by former Google Apps engineering director Christopher Nguyen. The firm's PAnalytics product, what it calls the "power layer," helps companies search, edit and analyze data. Its pInsights product, the "beauty layer," turns that data into easy-to-read charts or dashboards akin to a Google Doc.
Bitglass
Headquarters: Campbell, Calif.
CEO: Nat Kausik
New Funding: $25 million
Round: Series B
Backers: SingTell Innov8, New Enterprise Associates and Norwest
Bitglass, launched in 2013, didn't emerge from stealth mode until January with data protection solutions for the enterprise. The Software-as-a-Service provider's products promise to help companies track and encrypt information on mobile devices or cloud applications as more businesses ride the BYOD wave. Bitglass services the finance, health care and manufacturing industries, among others. The Series B funding, which brings total funds raised to $35 million, is expected to help fuel sales, marketing and development efforts.