Dear Startup Investor,
I’m pleased to report that Appvance just closed its second post-Series A raise.
This one was for $5 million. Half was new VC money. The other half was from a convertible note raise done last February and converted into shares as part of Appvance’s current raise.
To refresh your memory, we invested in Appvance in January 2014. Appvance uses the cloud to simulate millions of users piling into an app simultaneously. Nobody was doing this before.
Appvance has plugged a gaping hole that hackers could have easily taken advantage of.
CEO and founder Kevin Surace is now moving on to his next big challenge. He told me in a recently emailed “confidential update” that he’s “laser focused” on unifying all test types “from unit to functional to performance to security into one ‘write-once’ enterprise-class platform.”
He said the “excitement in the industry is real” and he has a “pipeline full of interested clients waiting for this ‘DevOps-Ready’ platform.”
What’s DevOps? Here’s the definition I sent you in my last update on Appvance…
The practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.
VC company Javelin Ventures is investing $2.5 million in Appvance’s current round. Javelin says it likes to invest in “early-stage companies with incredible potential, managed by teams of energetic, trustworthy and capable leaders.”
When a startup attracts new institutional money, it’s usually a sign that the company’s upside is crystalizing or its targeted market is taking off. In Appvance’s case, it’s both. Javelin sees a big opportunity in DevOps because of “the need for DevOps-ready test automation in every enterprise.”
The old “siloed tools” have become a critical bottleneck. “Appvance,” Javelin says, “has the only technology we have seen that attacks that problem head-on.”
This is the second raise Appvance has done since our original recommendation. Kevin told me from the beginning that he was going to build the company and its products slowly and methodically. He also said the products would be the best on the market and would garner substantial demand.
Kevin’s been true to his word.
The company is growing steadily, with 30 employees now. Most importantly, Appvance’s products have the potential to completely dominate the company’s market space. I’m very pleased with Appvance’s progress.
I told my partner Adam yesterday that Appvance has a chance to be one of the best-performing startups in our Startup Investor portfolio. I really believe that.
Appvance will be using the current funding to expand operations, including product development, sales and customer support.
Invest early and well,
Andy
Startup Investor Portfolio
