• SOASTA

  Participated · Debt Financing · Mar 2016

  SOASTA builds Digital Performance Management products including its mPulse Real User Monitoring and the CloudTest platform, the company’s flagship large-scale testing solution. The company reported a record fourth quarter with its highest quarterly bookings and 63 new customers in that quarter, and 196 new customers for the fiscal year. SOASTA has more than 35,000 registered users of its performance analytics platform, has performed over 100 million tests, and measured more than 200 billion user experiences; its mPulse community grew 140% year‑over‑year. Customers include more than 500 large digital brands and 49 of the Top 100 Internet retailers, with named users such as Barnes & Noble, FreshDirect, Ancestry.com, 1‑800 Contacts and REI. SOASTA plans to use new capital to ramp growth and continue to drive leadership in the emerging multi‑billion‑dollar DPM market by expanding its performance and customer‑experience offerings. SOASTA provides cloud and mobile test automation and real-user monitoring solutions, including CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse, that enable developers, QA and IT operations to test and monitor users at scale. Its platform streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real time to deliver actionable intelligence. The company lists customers such as Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos, Backcountry.com, Chegg, Experian, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA plans to use the new funding to expand globally by adding marketing, sales and development resources to fortify its position in mobile and web testing and real-user monitoring. The company highlighted recent industry recognition, including being named a “Leader” in Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites and winning Best RUM at the 2013 Velocity Conference. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. SOASTA offers CloudTest, a platform that enables developers to test and monitor web and mobile application performance, available as an on-demand cloud service or as virtual and hardware appliances. CloudTest detects bugs, measures load times, and assesses stability under traffic spikes. Many retailers use the platform to test new features and ensure stability during high-traffic events. The company counts six of the top 10 retailers (including Target, Best Buy, and Gilt Groupe) among its customers and serves roughly 3,000 companies across financial services, media, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, and technology. SOASTA raised $12 million in the current financing, bringing its total funding to $33 million. The company intends to use the new capital for international expansion and product development in mobile testing. Soasta offers a browser-based testing service called CloudTest On-Demand that lets users describe website workflows (for example, logging in or browsing) and run large-scale tests. Users log onto the service, define the processes to examine, and Soasta returns extensive results to help find and fix issues. The company says it has performed testing for clients including Best Buy, MySpace, SAP, and Zappos.com. Soasta is based in Mountain View, Calif. The company raised $10 million in a third round led by UV Partners, with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures, and The Entrepreneurs' Fund. This new round follows prior financings in which the company previously raised $8.4 million.

• InboundWriter

  Participated · Equity · Nov 2012

  InboundWriter develops cloud-based software that incorporates real-time information gathered from the web to automate the process of optimizing online content. Its product integrates tailored best practices and deep insights directly into the writing process. The company has just released a new Enterprise tier targeted at content producers. InboundWriter is led by newly appointed CEO Skip Besthoff, who moved into the role after serving as a board member and investor via Castile Ventures. The San Mateo-based company raised $2.5M in new funding. Backers include Castile Ventures, Rho Canada Ventures, Formative Ventures, The Entrepreneurs’ Fund III and Crosslink Capital, and the company says it will use the capital to accelerate expansion into the enterprise market.

• Mashery

  Participated · Equity · Jul 2012

  Mashery operates a SaaS-based API management platform that helps companies expose, manage and scale APIs. Its developer network grew from 35,000 in 2010 to 100,000 a year later and to 160,000 currently, reflecting 30% growth over the past year. The platform has seen 272% year-over-year traffic growth, and applications built on Mashery-powered APIs increased over 75% year-over-year to 50,000 (doubling since last May). Mashery works with many companies, including roughly 10% of the Fortune 100 and about 150 brands such as ABC News, Cisco, Expedia and Comcast. The company cites web and mobile app demand as key growth drivers. Mashery plans to use new capital to expand its platform, operations, sales and marketing teams and is hiring to support that expansion. Mashery is a San Francisco-based provider of API management tools and services. Led by CEO and co-founder Oren Michels, the company provides on-demand API infrastructure enablement and management to over 100 brands across media, retail, travel, business services, geo-local services and finance. Founded in 2006, Mashery lists clients such as Best Buy, Netflix and The New York Times. The company recently raised $11M and intends to use the funds to broaden its current offering and expand sales and marketing activities in key vertical markets. Its core product is on-demand API infrastructure and management targeted at enterprises in multiple verticals. The funding positions Mashery to accelerate product development and commercial expansion. Mashery builds API management and developer-network services that enable companies to expose and monetize APIs for web, mobile, and third-party platforms. Since 2006 it has connected over 40,000 developers to its network and counts clients including Best Buy, Netflix, Reuters, the New York Times, and Trulia. The company competes with players such as 3scale. With the new funding Mashery plans to expand its product and hire additional sales and marketing staff to deepen penetration in specific verticals. CEO Oren Michels has emphasized that APIs are driving significant revenue and business growth for brands. Financially, Mashery has raised $13.7 million to date following a $5.5 million Series C. Mashery offers an API management service that bundles documentation, community management, access control and branded developer-facing tools (wiki, blog, forum) for companies exposing APIs. Pro accounts add metrics, developer registration, key issuance and access management; the company plans to add payment-processing support for commercial APIs. Mashery stores customer data on Amazon S3 and runs on EC2 to enable scalable, low-cost operations. The company offers a free tier with documentation and community features and a Pro tier priced at roughly $10k–$20k per year for a typical API and community. The first APIs available through Mashery are Baynote and Loomia. Mashery was founded by former Feedster team members Oren Michaels, Kirsten Spoljaric, Clay Loveless and Scott Rafer; the company was incorporated in May.

• Eightfold Logic

  Participated · Series C · May 2011

  Eightfold Logic has launched InboundWriter, a cloud-based social writing app designed to help online content creators create relevant and shareable content. InboundWriter indexes the social web in real time to identify what target audiences are reading, sharing, and discussing, and streams that social intelligence into a web-based document editor. The editor provides recommendations on the best words and phrases to use and offers interactive feedback mechanisms to measure and optimize content. The product is aimed at bloggers and other online content creators and is compared in the article to tools like Zemanta. The company confirmed a new $2 million Series C financing from existing investors and said the new financing brings total capital raised to nearly $20 million. The company formerly operated under the name Enquisite.

• Capella

  Participated · Equity · Apr 2011

  Capella develops wavelength selective switch (WSS) products — including its patented CRx® and WavePath® lines — that enable dynamic, remote reconfigurability with integrated optical channel monitoring for metro and long‑haul networks. Its WSS technology aims to reduce service provider CAPEX and OPEX and support applications such as VoIP, VoD, and video gaming. The company plans new product offerings and operational improvements as it expands to meet growing market demand in the ROADM space. Management intends to use recent funding to expand and strengthen Capella’s presence in the ROADM market, which industry research projects could grow to $1.8 billion over the next four years. Capella’s products target both ROADM and optical cross‑connect (OXC) deployments and emphasize simplifying network operations and planning.

No current team members are available.