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Cribl raises $200M to help enterprises do more with their data
At a time when remote work, cybersecurity attacks and increased privacy and compliance requirements threaten a company’s data, more companies are collecting and storing their observability data, but are being locked in with vendors or have difficulty accessing the data.
Enter Cribl. The San Francisco-based company is developing an “open ecosystem of data” for enterprises that utilizes unified data pipelines, called “observability pipelines,” to parse and route any type of data that flows through a corporate IT system. Users can then choose their own analytics tools and storage destinations like Splunk, Datadog and Exabeam, but without becoming dependent on a vendor.
The company announced Wednesday a $200 million round of Series C funding to value Cribl at $1.5 billion, according to a source close to the company. Greylock and Redpoint Ventures co-led the round and were joined by new investor IVP, existing investors Sequoia and CRV and strategic investment from Citi Ventures and CrowdStrike. The new capital infusion gives Cribl a total of $254 million in funding since the company was started in 2017, Cribl co-founder and CEO Clint Sharp told TechCrunch.
Sharp did not discuss the valuation; however, he believes that the round is “validation that the observability pipeline category is legit.” Data is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 25%, and organizations are collecting five times more data today than they did 10 years ago, he explained.
“Ultimately, they want to ask and answer questions, especially for IT and security people,” Sharp added. “When Zoom sends data on who started a phone call, that might be data I need to know so I know who is on the call from a security perspective and who they are communicating with. Also, who is sending files to whom and what machines are communicating together in case there is a malicious actor. We can also find out who is having a bad experience with the system and what resources they can access to try and troubleshoot the problem.”
Cribl also enables users to choose how they want to store their data, which is different from competitors that often lock companies into using only their products. Instead, customers can buy the best products from different categories and they will all talk to each other through Cribl, Sharp said.
Though Cribl is developing a pipeline for data, Sharp sees it more as an “observability lake,” as more companies have differing data storage needs. He explains that the lake is where all of the data will go that doesn’t need to go into an existing storage solution. The pipelines will send the data to specific tools and then collect the data, and what doesn’t fit will go back into the lake so companies have it to go back to later. Companies can keep the data for longer and more cost effectively.
Cribl said it is seven times more efficient at processing event data and boasts a customer list that includes Whole Foods, Vodafone, FINRA, Fannie Mae and Cox Automotive.
Sharp went after additional funding after seeing huge traction in its existing customer base, saying that “when you see that kind of traction, you want to keep doubling down.” His aim is to have a presence in every North American city and in Europe, to continue launching new products and growing the engineering team.
Up next, the company is focusing on go-to-market and engineering growth. Its headcount is 150 currently, and Sharp expects to grow that to 250 by the end of the year.
Over the last fiscal year, Cribl grew its revenue 293%, and Sharp expects that same trajectory for this year. The company is now at a growth stage, and with the new investment, he believes Cribl is the “future leader in observability.”
“This is a great investment for us, and every dollar, we believe, is going to create an outsized return as we are the only commercial company in this space,” he added.
Scott Raney, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, said his firm is a big enterprise investor in software, particularly in companies that help organizations leverage data to protect themselves, a sweet spot that Cribl falls into.
He feels Sharp is leading a team, having come from Splunk, that has accomplished a lot, has a vision and a handle on the business and knows the market well. Where Splunk is capturing the machine data and using its systems to extract the data, Cribl is doing something similar in directing the data where it needs to go, while also enabling companies to utilize multiple vendors and build apps to sit on top of its infrastructure.
“Cribl is adding opportunity by enriching the data flowing through, and the benefits are going to be meaningful in cost reduction,” Raney said. “The attitude out there is to put data in cheaper places, and afford more flexibility to extract data. Step one is to make that transition, and step two is how to drive the data sitting there. Cribl is doing something that will go from being a big business to a legacy company 30 years from now.”
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Announcing the agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: SaaS
On October 27, we’re taking on the ferociously competitive field of software as a service (SaaS), and we’re thrilled to announce our packed agenda, overflowing with some of the biggest names and most exciting startups in the industry. And you’re in luck, because $75 early-bird tickets are still on sale — make sure you book yours so you can enjoy all the agenda has to offer and save $100 bucks before prices go up!
Throughout the day, you can expect to hear from industry experts, and take part in discussions about the potential of new advances in data, open source, how to deal with the onslaught of security threats, investing in early-stage startups and plenty more.
We’ll be joined by some of the biggest names and the smartest and most prescient people in the industry, including Javier Soltero at Google, Kathy Baxter at Salesforce, Jared Spataro at Microsoft, Jay Kreps at Confluent, Sarah Guo at Greylock and Daniel Dines at UiPath.
You’ll be able to find and engage with people from all around the world through world-class networking on our virtual platform — all for $75 and under for a limited time, with even deeper discounts for nonprofits and government agencies, students and up-and-coming founders!
Our agenda showcases some of the powerhouses in the space, but also plenty of smaller teams that are building and debunking fundamental technologies in the industry. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves and will be adding some new names to the agenda over the next month, so keep your eyes open.
In the meantime, check out these agenda highlights:
Survival of the Fittest: Investing in Today’s SaaS Market
with Casey Aylward (Costanoa Ventures), Kobie Fuller (Upfront) and Sarah Guo (Greylock)
- The venture capital world is faster and more competitive than ever. For investors hoping to get into the hottest SaaS deal, things are even crazier. With more nontraditional money pouring into the sector, remote dealmaking now the norm and an increasingly global market for software startups, venture capitalists are being forced to shake up their own operations — and expectations. TechCrunch sits down with three leading investors to discuss how they are fighting for allocation in hot deals, what they’ve changed in their own processes, and what today’s best founders are demanding.
Data, Data Everywhere
with Ali Ghodsi (Databricks)
- As companies struggle to manage and share increasingly large amounts of data, it’s no wonder that Databricks, whose primary product is a data lake, was valued at a whopping $28 billion for its most recent funding round. We’re going to talk to CEO Ali Ghodsi about why his startup is so hot, and what comes next.
SaaS Security, Today and Tomorrow
with Edna Conway (Microsoft), Olivia Rose (Amplitude)
- Enterprises face a constant stream of threats, from nation states to cybercriminals and corporate insiders. After a year where billions worked from home and the cloud reigned supreme, startups and corporations alike can’t afford to stay off the security pulse. Find out what SaaS startups need to know about security now, and in the future.
Automation’s Moment Is Now
with Daniel Dines (UiPath), Laela Sturdy (CapitalG) and Dave Wright (ServiceNow)
- One thing we learned during the pandemic is the importance of automation, and that’s only likely to be more pronounced as we move forward. We’ll be talking to UiPath CEO Daniel Dines, Laela Sturdy, an investor at CapitalG and Dave Wright from ServiceNow about why this is automation’s moment.
Was the Pandemic Cloud Productivity’s Spark
with Javier Soltero (Google)
- One big aspect of SaaS is productivity apps like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. We’ll talk with executive Javier Soltero about the role Google Workspace plays in the Google cloud strategy.
The Future Is Wide Open
with Abby Kearns (Puppet), Aghi Marietti (Kong) and Jason Warner (Redpoint)
- Many startups today have an open-source component, and it’s no wonder. It builds an audience and helps drive sales. We’ll talk with Abby Kearns from Puppet, Augusto “Aghi” Marietti from Kong and Jason Warner, an investor at Redpoint, about why open source is such a popular way to build a business.
How Microsoft Shifted from On-Prem to the Cloud
with Jared Spataro (Microsoft)
- Jared Spataro has been with Microsoft for over 15 years and he was a part of the shift from strictly on-prem software to that which is dominated by the cloud. Today he runs one of the most successful SaaS products out there, and we’ll talk to him about how Microsoft made that shift and what it’s meant to the company.
How Startups are Turning Data into Software Gold
with Jenn Knight (Agentsync), Barr Moses (Monte Carlo) and Dan Wright (DataRobot)
- The era of big data is behind us. Today’s leading SaaS startups are working with data, instead of merely fighting to help customers collect information. We’ve collected three leaders from three data-focused startups that are forging new markets to get their insight on how today’s SaaS companies are leveraging data to build new companies, attack new problems and, of course, scale like mad.
What Happens After Your Startup Is Acquired
with Jyoti Bansal (Harness), Nick Mehta (GainSight) and Jewel Burkes Solomon (Partpic)
- We’ll speak to three founders about the emotional upheaval of being acquired and what happens after the check clears and the sale closes. Our panel includes Jyoti Bansal who founded AppDynamics, Jewel Burkes Solomon, who founded Partpic and Nick Mehta from GainSight.
Fireside Chat
with Jay Kreps (Confluent)
- Confluent, the streaming platform built on top of Apache Kafka, was born out of a project at LinkedIn, and rode that from startup to IPO. We’ll speak to co-founder and CEO Jay Kreps to learn about what that journey was like.
We’ll have more sessions and names shortly, so stay tuned. But get excited in the meantime, we certainly are.
Pro tip: Keep your finger on the pulse of TC Sessions: SaaS. Get updates when we announce new speakers, add events and offer ticket discounts.
Why should you carve a day out of your hectic schedule to attend TC Sessions: SaaS? This may be the first year we’ve focused on SaaS, but this ain’t our first rodeo. Here’s what other attendees have to say about their TC Sessions experience.
“TC Sessions: Mobility offers several big benefits. First, networking opportunities that result in concrete partnerships. Second, the chance to learn the latest trends and how mobility will evolve. Third, the opportunity for unknown startups to connect with other mobility companies and build brand awareness.” — Karin Maake, senior director of communications at FlashParking.
“People want to be around what’s interesting and learn what trends and issues they need to pay attention to. Even large companies like GM and Ford were there, because they’re starting to see the trend move toward mobility. They want to learn from the experts, and TC Sessions: Mobility has all the experts.” — Melika Jahangiri, vice president at Wunder Mobility.
TC Sessions: SaaS 2021 takes place on October 27. Grab your team, join your community and create opportunity. Don’t wait — jump on the early bird ticket sale right now.
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Sarah Guo, Kobie Fuller & Casey Aylward headline investor panel at TC Sessions: SaaS
While SaaS has become the default way to deliver software in 2021, it still takes a keen eye to find the companies that will grow into successful businesses, maybe even more so with so much competition. That’s why we’re bringing together three investors to discuss what they look for when they invest in SaaS startups.
For starters, we’ll have Sarah Guo, who has been a partner at Greylock since 2013 where she concentrates on AI, cybersecurity, infrastructure and the future of work — all in a SaaS context of course. Among her investments are Obsidian, Clubhouse and Awake. Her exits include Demisto, which Palo Alto acquired for $560 million in 2019 and Skyhigh Networks, which McAfee bought for $400 million in 2018.
Prior to joining Greylock, she worked for Goldman Sachs investing in growth-stage companies and advising SaaS companies like Dropbox and Workday.
Next we’ll have Kobie Fuller, a partner at Upfront Ventures, who looks at SaaS as well as AR and VR. Fuller has been at Upfront since 2016 when he joined after a three-year stint at Accel. He oversaw a pair of billion dollar exits while at Accel including ExactTarget to Salesforce for $2.5 billion and Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion. Upfront investments include Bevy, community building software, which recently got a $40 million investment with 20% of that coming from 25 Black investors.
Finally, we’ll have Casey Aylward, a principal at Costanoa Ventures where she concentrates on early-stage enterprise startups. Among her investments have been Aserto, Bigeye and Cyral. She tends to concentrate on developer tools. “My entire career so far has been focused on developers: whether it was building tools for developers, building software myself or now investing in enabling technologies for the next generation of technical users,” she wrote on her bio page.
This prestigious group will share their thoughts at TC Sessions: SaaS, a one-day virtual event that will examine the state of SaaS to help startup founders, developers and investors understand the state of play and what’s next. We hope you’ll join us.
The single-day event will take place 100% virtually on October 27 and will feature actionable advice, Q&A with some of SaaS’s biggest names and plenty of networking opportunities. Importantly, $75 Early Bird passes are now on sale. Book your passes today to save $100 before prices go up.
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Wisetack raises $19M as its buy-now-pay-later service for IRL services scales
This morning Wisetack, a startup that provides buy-now-pay-later services to in-person business transactions, announced that is has closed a total of $19 million across two rounds, a seed investment and a Series A.
Greylock led both rounds, with the seed round clocking in at $4 million and the Series A at $15 million. Bain Capital Ventures also took part in the company’s fundraising.
Notably both rounds were closed in 2019, making these amongst the more aged rounds that we’ve heard of in recent quarters. However, as much venture reporting was delayed last year due to the pandemic and political unsettlement, I am still willing to cover the occasional antique deal.
Wisetack caught our eye not only due to its fundraising activity, but also thanks the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) space becoming all the more interesting in the wake of Affirm’s direct listing. Affirm is perhaps the best-known service of its type, making its liquidity moment — and post-IPO performance — impactful for its broader business category.
But while Affirm wants to offer point-of-sale BNPL services to online merchants, Wisetack is taking a different approach. It focuses on the in-person business world, helping finance consumer transactions involving things like home improvement and car repair; the sort of big transactions that your average family might not have the cash to cover but also doesn’t want to put on a credit card.
Wisetack partners with vertical SaaS players in different areas. Say, plumbing. This allows users of those vertical SaaS applications — the plumbers, sticking to the same example — to offer Wisetack’s BNPL service to their customers.
It’s well known that vertical SaaS has wide application. A favorite recent example is SingleOps, which provides software for the so-called “green industry,” the world of lawns and landscaping. There’s SaaS for all sorts of IRL work, which could mean that Wisetack has a good number of software providers to sell into.
The model appears to be working, at least thus far. Wisetack shared with TechCrunch that its loan volume rose 20x between January of 2020 and January of 2021. As the company generates revenues from merchants (loan processing costs), and consumer interest, it’s likely that its revenue scales with loan volume. If the relationship is even closer to direct, Wisetack grew quite a lot last year.
The startup also said that the number of businesses using Wisetack grew 25-fold last year to a number in the “thousands.”
Wisetack fits neatly into a number of recent trends. The first is its work with vertical SaaS, a notable slice of the software market. The second is that Wisetack is another example of an API-led business, offering its service as a tech-powered add-on to other bits of code. And, third, that Wisetack had the same lead investor twice in sequential rounds. This sort of doubling-down from the venture community has become common in recent quarters as the signaling risk of having the lead twice in a row has been zeroed out by general investor enthusiasm for more equity in what appear to be winning startups.
Finally, the Wisetack round is interesting as it is nearly a sort of vertical BNPL, or at least a vertically focused BNPL. The company was reticent to share notes on how it comes to credit decisions, but we presume that all BNPL players that do focus on a particular niche or segment.
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Gretel announces $12M Series A to make it easier to anonymize data
As companies work with data, one of the big obstacles they face is making sure they are not exposing personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive data. It usually requires a painstaking manual effort to strip out that data. Gretel, an early-stage startup, wants to change that by making it faster and easier to anonymize data sets. Today the company announced a $12 million Series A led by Greylock. The company has now raised $15.5 million.
Gretel co-founder and CEO Alex Watson says that his company was founded to make it simpler to anonymize data and unlock data sets that were previously out of reach because of privacy concerns.
“As a developer, you want to test an idea or build a new feature, and it can take weeks to get access to the data you need. Then essentially it boils down to getting approvals to get started, then snapshotting a database, and manually removing what looks like personal data and hoping that you got everything.”
Watson, who previously worked as a GM at AWS, believed that there needed to be a faster and more reliable way to anonymize the data, and that’s why he started Gretel. The first product is an open-source, synthetic machine learning library for developers that strips out personally identifiable information.
“Developers use our open source library, which trains machine learning models on their sensitive data, then as that training is happening we are enforcing something called differential privacy, which basically ensures that the model doesn’t memorize details about secrets for individual people inside of the data,” he said. The result is a new artificial data set that is anonymized and safe to share across a business.
The company was founded last year, and they have actually used this year to develop the open-source product and build an open-source community around it. “So our approach and our go-to-market here is we’ve open-sourced our underlying libraries, and we will also build a SaaS service that makes it really easy to generate synthetic data and anonymized data at scale,” he said.
As the founders build the company, they are looking at how to build a diverse and inclusive organization, something that they discuss at their regular founders’ meetings, especially as they look to take these investment dollars and begin to hire additional senior people.
“We make a conscious effort to have diverse candidates apply, and to really make sure we reach out to them and have a conversation, and that’s paid off, or is in the process of paying off I would say, with the candidates in our pipeline right now. So we’re excited. It’s tremendously important that we avoid group think that happens so often,” he said.
The company doesn’t have paying customers, but the plan is to build off the relationships it has with design partners and begin taking in revenue next year. Sridhar Ramaswamy, the partner at Greylock who is leading the investment, says that his firm is placing a bet on a pre-revenue company because he sees great potential for a service like this.
“We think Gretel will democratize safe and controlled access to data for the whole world the way GitHub democratized source code access and control,” Ramaswamy said.
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Greylock’s Asheem Chandna on ‘shifting left’ in cybersecurity and the future of enterprise startups
Last week was a busy week, what with an election in Myanmar and all (well, and the United States, I guess). So perhaps you were glued to your TV or smartphone, and missed out on our conversation with Asheem Chandna, a long-time partner at Greylock who has invested in enterprise and cybersecurity startups for nearly two decades now, backing such notable companies as Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics and Sumo Logic. We have more Extra Crunch Live shows coming up.
Enterprise software is changing faster this year than it has in a decade. Coronavirus, remote work, collaboration and new cybersecurity threats have combined to force companies to rethink their IT strategies, and that means more opportunities — and challenges — for enterprise founders than ever before. In some cases, we are seeing an acceleration of existing trends, and in others, we are seeing all new trends come to the forefront.
All that is to say that there was so much on the docket to talk about last week. Chandna and I discussed what’s happening in early-stage enterprise startups, whether vertical SaaS is the future of enterprise investing, data and no-code platforms, and then this rise of “shift left” security.
The following interview has been edited and condensed from our original Extra Crunch Live conversation.
What’s happening today in the early-stage startup world?
Chandna has been a long-time backer of startups at their earliest stages, with some of his investments being literally birthed in Greylock’s offices. So I was curious how he saw the landscape today given all that prior experience.
TechCrunch: What sort of companies are exciting for you today? Are there particular markets you’re particularly attuned to?
Asheem Chandna: One is digital transformation. Every company is trying to figure out how to become more digital, and this has been accelerated by COVID-19. Second is information technology today and its journey to the cloud. I would say we might be about 10% or 15% of the way there. Some of the trends are clear, but the journey is actually still relatively early, and so there’s just a ton of opportunity ahead.
The third one is leveraging data for better predictability along with analytics. Every CEO is looking to make better decisions. And you know, most leaders make decisions based on gut instinct and a combination of data. If the data can tell a story, if the data can help you better predict, there’s a lot of potential here.
I view these as three macro trends, and then if one was to add to that, I would say cybersecurity has never been more important than it is today. I’ve been around cyber for over two decades, and just the prominence and importance and priority has never been more important than today. So that’s kind of another key area.
I want to dive into your first category, digital transformation. This is a phrase that I feel like I’ve heard for a decade now, with “Data is the new oil” and all these sorts of buzzwords and marketing phrases. Where are we in that process? Are we at the beginning? Are we at the end? What’s next from a startup perspective?
Due to COVID-19 and because of the way people are working today, digital’s become the primary medium. I would still say we’re early, and you can literally look sector by sector to see how much more work there is to do here.
Take enterprise sales itself, which is early in what I consider digitalization. It’s even more important today than it was a year ago. I’m using video to basically communicate, and then the next piece would basically be trialing of software. Can I allow even complex software to be self trials and can I measure the customer journey through that trial? Then there’s the contracting of the software, and we go to the sale process, can all that be done digitally?
So even when you take something as very mundane as enterprise sales, it’s being transformed. Winning teams, winning software entrepreneurs, they understand this well, and they’d be wise to examine every step of this process, and instrument it and digitize it.
Vertical versus horizontal plays in enterprise
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Extra Crunch Live: Join Greylock’s Asheem Chandna today at 3pm EST/12pm PST on the future of enterprise and cybersecurity investing
Yes, there is an election, but that’s getting pretty boring at this point. What’s far more interesting is the future of enterprise and cybersecurity startups, markets where companies are dumping billions of dollars in the wake of the largest change in office work in decades. Old notions are being discarded, new ideas are in — and all that portends huge potential opportunities for ambitious founders.
That’s why I am so excited to be hosting the next edition of our Extra Crunch Live interview series with the superlative enterprise venture capitalist Asheem Chandna of Greylock. We’re live in about two hours today at 3 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST/8pm GMT. Details to join are below the fold, and if you don’t have an Extra Crunch membership, click through to signup in advance.
For nearly two decades, Asheem Chandna has been investing in enterprise and security startups at Greylock, with massive investment wins in Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics and Sumo Logic. These days, he continues to invest in cybersecurity with companies like Awake Security and Abnormal Security, data platforms like Rubrik and Delphix, and the stealthy search engine company Neeva. As a leading early-stage investor and mentor in the space, he’s seen a multitude of companies transition from inception to product-market fit to IPO.
We’re going to be talking about the current landscape for enterprise and cybersecurity startups and then also talk about company building in these contexts, an area that Chandna has been particularly focused over his career. Plus, as always with ECL, we’ll be taking questions from you, our always inquisitive audience.
So come prepared for a great conversation, and join us shortly for another ECL live broadcast.
Event Details
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Join Greylock’s Asheem Chandna on November 5 at noon PST/3 pm EST/8 pm GMT to discuss the future of enterprise and cybersecurity investing
The world of enterprise software and cybersecurity has taken multiple body blows since COVID-19 demolished the in-person office, flinging employees across the world and forcing companies to adapt to an all-remote productivity model. The shift has required companies to rethink not only collaboration software, but also the infrastructure that powers it and the best way to protect assets once their security perimeters have been destroyed.
The pandemic has also dramatically increased the usage of digital services, forcing cloud providers to keep up with crushing demands for performance and reliability.
In short — it’s never been a better time to be an enterprise investor (or, possibly, a founder).
So I’m excited to announce our next guest in our Extra Crunch Live interview series: Asheem Chandna from Greylock, one of the top enterprise investors of the past two decades who has worked with multiple important founding teams from whiteboard to IPO. We’re scheduled for Thursday, November 5 at noon PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT (check that daylight savings time math!)
Login details are below the fold for EC members, and if you don’t have an Extra Crunch membership, click through to sign up.
For nearly two decades, Asheem Chandna has invested in enterprise and security startups at Greylock, with massive investment wins in Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics and Sumo Logic. These days, he continues to invest in cybersecurity with companies like Awake Security and Abnormal Security, data platforms like Rubrik and Delphix, and the stealthy search engine company Neeva. As a leading early-stage investor and mentor in the space, he’s seen a multitude of companies transition from inception to product-market fit to IPO.
We’ll talk about what all the turbulence in enterprise means for the future of startups in the space, how cybersecurity is evolving given the new threat landscape and also discuss a bit about how the public markets and their aggressive multiples for Silicon Valley enterprise startups is changing the strategy of venture capitalists. Plus, we’ll talk about company building, developing founders as leaders and more.
Join us next week with Asheem on Thursday, November 5 at noon PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. Login details and calendar invite are below.
Event Details
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Rockset announces $40M Series B as data analytics solution gains momentum
Rockset, a cloud-native analytics company, announced a $40 million Series B investment today led by Sequoia with help from Greylock, the same two firms that financed its Series A. The startup has now raised a total of $61.5 million, according to the company.
As co-founder and CEO Venkat Venkataramani told me at the time of the Series A in 2018, there is a lot of manual work involved in getting data ready to use and it acts as a roadblock to getting to real insight. He hoped to change that with Rockset.
“We’re building out our service with innovative architecture and unique capabilities that allows full-featured fast SQL directly on raw data. And we’re offering this as a service. So developers and data scientists can go from useful data in any shape, any form to useful applications in a matter of minutes. And it would take months today,” he told me in 2018.
In fact, “Rockset automatically builds a converged index on any data — including structured, semi-structured, geographical and time series data — for high-performance search and analytics at scale,” the company explained.
It seems to be resonating with investors and customers alike as the company raised a healthy B round and business is booming. Rockset supplied a few metrics to illustrate this. For starters, revenue grew 290% in the last quarter. While they didn’t provide any foundational numbers for that percentage growth, it is obviously substantial.
In addition, the startup reports adding hundreds of new users, again not nailing down any specific numbers, and queries on the platform are up 313%. Without specifics, it’s hard to know what that means, but that seems like healthy growth for an early stage startup, especially in this economy.
Mike Vernal, a partner at Sequoia, sees a company helping to get data to work faster than other solutions, which require a lot of handling first. “Rockset, with its innovative new approach to indexing data, has quickly emerged as a true leader for real-time analytics in the cloud. I’m thrilled to partner with the company through its next phase of growth,” Vernal said in a statement.
The company was founded in 2016 by the creators of RocksDB. The startup had previously raised a $3 million seed round when they launched the company and the $18.5 million A round in 2018.
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Schools are closing their doors, but Opendoor isn’t
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we’re looking forward to bringing the live show back to the conference next year, vaccine allowing.
Thankfully we had Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials, Alexandra Ames fitting us into the program and some folks to watch live.
What did we talk about? All of this (and some very, very bad jokes):
- The Great American SPAC-Off: As both Opendoor and Desktop Metal approach the public markets on the wings of SPACs, we ask why. And why we have to keep talking about SPACs, which we do not want to do.
- But the public markets are hot and active, with companies like JFrog and Snowflake going public to great effect. JFrog had a great IPO. Snowflake had an insane IPO.
- But there was a lot of action from the private markets as well, including Airtable raising $185 million, ApplyBoard raised a $55 million extension and Tonal raised $110 million, because connected fitness is hotter than SaaS at the moment.
- We also riffed on Natasha’s venture trends’ piece, digging into how to get to conviction in a remote-only world. As it turns out, we have notes on video games.
- And there were two new funds, including one from the Chainsmokers (hot, fun, great) and another from Greylock (traditional, Victorian and huge). In more serious commentary, the Greylock raise continues the mega-fund era.
And then we tried to play a game that may or may not make it into the final cut. Either way, it was great to have Equity back at Disrupt. More to come. Hugs from us!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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