Participated · Equity · Jun 2022

DataStax is the commercial company built on Apache Cassandra and offers Astra, a serverless database, alongside Astra Streaming for streaming workloads. After hiring CEO Chet Kapoor in October 2019, Kapoor and chief strategy officer Sam Ramji refocused and modernized the product line and made acquisitions including Kesque for streaming. The company emphasizes an open-source data stack for real-time applications and deep engagement with the Apache Cassandra and Pulsar communities. DataStax is pushing into cloud serverless offerings to simplify developers' experience and capture growing NoSQL and real-time application demand. Management sees these product moves as a path to substantially higher revenue over time, and investors have continued to back that strategy. DataStax is the commercial face of the open-source Apache Cassandra database, providing an enterprise-grade distribution and paid customer support. The company has extended Cassandra with features to help companies build applications, and offers tools for security, search, repair, best practices, monitoring and application development. A free version of Cassandra remains available while DataStax sells an enhanced, fee-based experience to customers. The company cites real-world deployments—Comcast used DataStax and Cassandra to power new set‑top box experiences such as live sports scores overlays. DataStax also remains a significant contributor to the open-source Cassandra project while commercializing enterprise capabilities. Financially, the company announced a $106M Series E, bringing total funding to date to over $190M. DataStax offers enterprise-grade and community-edition database distributions built on Apache Cassandra, focusing on high performance and scalability. The company is the chief committer to Apache Cassandra and invests heavily in the open-source project to grow usability and the community. It recently released version 3.1 of its software, which promises higher data load capacity, faster search, and improved usability. DataStax plans to use new funding to build out globally and expand community activity, including meetups in Asia and Latin America. The company is finding growing demand as organizations migrate from relational databases to NoSQL environments. Management has signaled that the business is being prepared for a potential IPO, though timing will depend on market conditions. DataStax provides a Big Data platform based on the open-source Apache Cassandra database and leverages Cassandra, Solr and Hadoop technologies. The platform is designed to enable continuous availability, deep analytics, real-time search and high-velocity throughput. Led by CEO Billy Bosworth, the company counts customers including Netflix, Pearson Education and Constant Contact. DataStax said it will use the new capital to further enhance its Big Data platform and to increase global customer acquisition. The company raised $25M in a Series C round and has raised $38.7M to date. DataStax is headquartered in San Mateo, CA. DataStax provides Apache Cassandra, an open source distributed database management system, and has launched DataStax Enterprise, a distributed and scalable platform powered by Cassandra for enterprise real-time and analytic workloads. Led by CEO Billy Bosworth and co-founder/CTO Jonathan Ellis, the company serves over 100 customers including Netflix, Cisco, Rackspace and Constant Contact across web, financial services, telecommunications, logistics and government verticals. DataStax is based in Burlingame, CA and also has offices in Austin, TX and Stamford, CT. The company closed an $11M Series B round to support expansion of Apache Cassandra adoption. New investor Crosslink Capital and existing investor Lightspeed Venture Partners participated in the financing. In conjunction with the round, Eric Chin of Crosslink Capital was added to DataStax’s Board of Directors.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2021

Kueski offers BNPL (Kueski Pay), personal loans (Kueski Cash) and interest-free earned wage advances (Kueski Up), using AI and machine learning on contextual and behavioral data to underwrite customers. The company says its dataset of six million unique applicants creates a data network effect to better predict repayment ability. Kueski declined to disclose hard revenue figures but the CEO expects the business will soon achieve $100M+ in ARR and reports strong recent product growth (Kueski Pay saw 210x GMV growth Nov 2020–Nov 2021; Cash grew 320% in the same period). Since 2012 Kueski has granted nearly 5 million loans online and has grown headcount to nearly 500 employees, planning to reach almost 1,000 by end of 2022. The firm has integrated thousands of merchants (including Walmart, Steve Madden and Sally Beauty) and plans to launch BNPL in brick-and-mortar stores and consumer apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Kueski says it will use the new capital to expand its BNPL footprint in Mexico, build new products for Mexican consumers and eventually expand to other Latin American countries. Kueski is an online lending company that offers real-time micro loans to Mexican consumers, using big data and machine learning to build credit-risk models and approve or reject applications in seconds. The company positions itself as the leading online lender for Mexico’s middle class and reports 7X+ annual growth since launch. Kueski says it has achieved better loss rates than a traditional credit card in Mexico. The firm plans to use new capital to accelerate portfolio growth, expand its team, and extend its brand presence throughout the region. Kueski was founded in 2012 and applies analytics to users’ credit history and digital footprint to underwrite loans.