Tech entrepreneur David Bagley co founded enStratus in 2009 with George Reese to provide an infrastructure management platform for enterprise applications in public and private clouds. The venture was self-funded at the onset and picked up some nominal angel funding this year before landing a $3.5m series A round with local VC El Dorado.
Of course, much of enStratus’ fundraising success thus far can be attributed to tangible milestones: forming local partnerships while gaining international customers and acquiring industry recognized talent.
TECHdotMN: We were talking about your recent fundraising round and when asked about a theme that stuck out in your mind, you said “bootstrapping”. Why?
enStratus is a b2b software company in an emerging market – and two of the hardest problems facing a company like us are first the challenge of identifying the hard problem that others will pay you solve to solve, and then secondly the challenge of correctly pacing the market. The great virtue of bootstrapping a company is that it forces you (and your prospects) to address these two issues head on from the get-go, there is no room for theory or excuses if paying the bills depend on finding a problem that a company is willing to pay you to solve right now.
Minneapolis startup enStratus has secured $3.5m in series A funding according to a fresh SEC filing.
enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management platform for enterprise-class applications in public/private clouds. The firm has a patented security architecture and an intelligent auto-recovery engine. Growing steadily since 2009 launch, they’ve recruiting some big names in the industry to support strong domestic and international growth.
This disclosure clearly names Jeff Hinck from El Dorado Ventures, a Minneapolis/Sand Hill Road VC, and Vesbridge was also in on the deal. In August, Hinck led on TST Media’s equal sized A round, which he elaborated on in a recent interview.
“We are excited about enStratus and the opportunity to help bring enterprise-level cloud management and governance to their customers,” Hinck said in a press release. “The enStratus solution, as well as a proven management team, were key factors in our decision to lead this round and we are confident in their continued success.
By Klint Finley, Silicon Angle
“Cloud governance and management company enStratus made two big hires in the past week: John Willis and James Urquhart, the new VP of Product Strategy.
Willis is well known in DevOps circles and previously worked for Opscode and the DevOps consulting firm DTO Solutions. Yesterday, Willis announced on Twitter that he would start on enStratus today. Urquhart writes the “Wisdom of Clouds” column for CNET and worked for Cisco.”
Interestingly, Urquhart was on the advisory board for over a year prior.
Via News Release
“Virteva and enStratus recently announced a partnership to deliver a complete suite of cloud services and solutions – from planning and migration to on-going management. With this new partnership, customers can migrate to the cloud with experienced consultants while leveraging the industry’s leading cloud management solution.
“Virteva and enStratus are a perfect fit for companies looking to migrate to the cloud, yet need the guidance and support to ensure success,” commented Tom Kieffer, CEO at Virteva. “Our joint customers will benefit by working with an experienced team of cloud professionals and a proven approach including on-going management solutions.”
According to our 2011 second quarter analysis, at least 17 19 early stage Minnesota technology firms received investment capital during April, May and June.
Updated 8/4/11: Three additions to our Q2 2011 Minnesota tech investment analysis:
- Ability Network’s round was actually $27m, $7m more than previously reported.
- Video for Athletes’ (aka PrepAthlete) $200k was inadvertently omitted from initial numbers.
- Online/offline classified advertising and integrated multimedia employment company JobDig banked$1.25m from LFE Capital, according to recent PWCMT data.
Roughly $26.5m $35m in funding was attributed to Minnesota’s high tech sector, largely skewed by health IT firm Ability Network’s $20m round $27m round. Ability’s raise was the largest tech deal Minnesota has seen since January 2010, when Cymbet raked in $31m for thin film rechargeable batteries. The remaining 16 18 startups raised roughly $6.5m $8m combined, for an average round of $405k $445k.
When contrasted against last quarter’s analysis, both the number of transactions (-15%) (-10%) and the aggregate funding volume are down (-30%) (-8%), although the average deal size is up slightly.
This analysis supports the full spectrum of financing ($25k+), regardless of stage or definition (angel, seed, series A etc.) and many startups are currently fundraising. While we attempt to compile the most complete set of data, it remains imperfect as unreported transactions occur.
Via News Release
“Minneapolis, MN and Montreal, Canada (June 29, 2011) – enStratus and Silanis Technology announced today a partnership to provide Silanis’ e-Sign Dedicated Signing Service via the Amazon Cloud. The combination of the leading enterprise electronic signature solution from Silanis and cloud management solution from enStratus delivers a secure, reliable, scalable and cloud independent platform for insurance, financial services and government customers.
Silanis is the most widely used e-signature solution helping enterprises accelerate business transactions and reduce costs while improving compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. enStratus is the leading cloud management solution for enterprises that want to leverage leading private and public clouds with high levels of security, reliability, and governance. The enStratus platform provides tight access controls, key management, encryption, and automated scaling to deliver the governance and high service levels Silanis customers require.”
Once again, legacy media has used the broad brush of sweeping generalizations to paint another sloppy picture of the funding activity in Minnesota’s startup community.
“But it’s one [ecosystem] that remains starved of oxygen — money. Until we get more investors chasing ideas in Minnesota…” says the author, citing one startup’s tale that apparently represents an entire marketplace.
While it may be fair to suggest that money doesn’t chase entrepreneurial ideas around here, the claim of starvation is patently false. As we’ve consistently reported since day one (and recently summarized [2]), money does exist and it has a tendency of gravitating towards those ideas which are executed on.
As a counterbalance to the mainstream misinformation, we offer quantifiable evidence from one timely source that speaks to the contrary: investor tax credits allocated through the first half of 2011 under Minnesota’s 25% angel investor tax credit program. This single source does not account for the numerous transactions conducted outside the scope of tax credits, nor unreported deals — such as a friends and family round — which usually happen when plans are still conceptual.
Via News Release,
“enStratus today announced that KT, South Korea’s largest landline operator and mobile service provider, has selected the enStratus cloud management platform for their private and public clouds in South Korea and across the region.
KT is a $17B telecommunications service provider that is leading the way with private and public cloud solutions in Asia. A recent benchmark study comparing leading cloud providers scored the KT private cloud at or near the top in each category, including CPU, disk and memory performance.”
By Dan Haugen, The Line
“Minneapolis-based enStratus helps companies manage their cloud-computing activities. Cloud computing is a term for using data or applications that are stored online rather than on a desktop computer’s hard drive.
“In 2010, what we’ve done is managed to become a global business,” says George Reese, the company’s founder and chief technology officer. And he has numbers to back it up. As of mid-August, 80 percent of the company’s new customers this year have been from outside of the United States. A year ago, enStratus didn’t have any non-domestic customers.”
Via News Release
“enStratus announced today that two leading cloud computing thought leaders have joined its Board of Advisors – James Urquhart and Simon Wardley. The enStratus Board of Advisors provides industry and customer perspectives to assist in the development of new cloud management solutions, partnerships and go-to-market strategies.”
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