Fivetran hauls in $565M on $5.6B valuation, acquires competitor HVR for $700M

by Ron Miller - September 20, 20210

Fivetran, the data connectivity startup, had a big day today. For starters it announced a $565 million investment on $5.6 billion valuation, but it didn’t stop there. It also announced its second acquisition this year, snagging HVR, a data integration competitor that had raised over $50M, for $700 million in

Zoom looks beyond video conferencing as triple-digit 2020 growth begins to slow

by Ron Miller - September 18, 20210

It’s been a heady 12-18 months for Zoom, the decade-old company that experienced monster 2020 growth and more recently, a mega acquisition with the $14.7 billion Five9 deal in July. That addition is part of a broader strategy the company has been undertaking the last couple of years to move

Confluent CEO Jay Kreps is coming to TC Sessions: SaaS for a fireside chat

by Ron Miller - September 17, 20210

As companies process ever-increasing amounts of data, moving it in real time is a huge challenge for organizations. Confluent is a streaming data platform built on top of the open source Apache Kafka project that’s been designed to process massive numbers of events. To discuss this, and more, Confluent CEO

Mirantis launches cloud-native data center-as-a-service software

by Ron Miller - September 16, 20210

Mirantis has been around the block, starting way back as an OpenStack startup, but a few years ago the company began to embrace cloud-native development technologies like containers, microservices and Kubernetes. Today, it announced Mirantis Flow, a fully managed open source set of services designed to help companies manage a

Confluent CEO Jay Kreps is coming to TC Sessions: SaaS for a fireside chat

Cyber Security

by Ron Miller - September 16, 20210

Relyance AI scores $25M Series A to ensure privacy compliance at the code level

by Ron Miller - September 15, 20210

Relyance AI, an early stage startup that is helping companies stay in compliance with privacy laws at the code level, announced a $25 million Series A today. At the same time, they revealed a previously unannounced $5 million seed round. Menlo Ventures and Unusual Ventures led the A round, while Unusual

DataRobot CEO Dan Wright coming to TC Sessions: SaaS to discuss role of data in machine learning

by Ron Miller - September 10, 20210

Just about every company is sitting on vast amounts of data, which they can use to their advantage if they can just learn how to harness it. Data is actually the fuel for machine learning models, and with the proper tools, businesses can learn to process this data and build

Snyk snags another $530M as valuation rises to $8.4B

by Ron Miller - September 10, 20210

Snyk, the Boston-based late-stage startup that is trying to help developers deliver more secure code, announced another mega-round today. This one was for $530 million, with $300 million in new money and $230 million in secondary funding, the latter of which is to help employees and early investors cash in

Box wins proxy board battle with activist investor Starboard Value

by Ron Miller - September 9, 20210

Box beats expectations, raises guidance as it looks for a comeback

A battle between Box and its majority shareholder Starboard Value over control of the board ended today when the company’s slate of directors easily defeated Starboard’s. It culminated months of maneuvering on both sides as they battled for control of the company. Box in a somewhat generic statement expressed gratitude for

TrueFort snares $30M Series B to expand zero trust application security solution

by Ron Miller - September 8, 20210

As companies try to navigate an ever-changing security landscape, it can be challenging to protect everything. Security startup TrueFort has built a zero trust solution focusing on protecting enterprise applications. Today, the company announced a $30 million Series B. Shasta Ventures led today’s round with participation from new firms Canaan and