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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based tech startup Zylo Inc. has secured its second big round of funding—including investments from big names in the world of cloud computing.
The company, founded in June 2016, announced Tuesday that it has landed $9.3 million in "Series A" funding from a group of institutional and individual investors. Series A typically refers to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing.
The company landed $3.3 million in seed funding in October 2016.
Zylo—a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, company that helps enterprises manage their SaaS subscriptions—was launched out of High Alpha Studio, the Indianapolis-based startup and venture firm.
The funding round was led by Menlo Park, California-based Bessemer Venture Partners, an investment firm that specializes in tech startups. It is currently invested in nearly 200 companies, including visual bookmarking site Pinterest, online dating site Zoosk and meal-delivery company Blue Apron, which went public last year.
As part of Bessemer’s investment, partner Byron Deeter will join Zylo’s board of directors.
“He’s a tier-one investor—as good as it gets,” said High Alpha Managing Partner Scott Dorsey. “That’s a huge validation.”
Zylo CEO Eric Christopher called Deeter a “superstar” in his field who has deep experience with both cloud computing and in helping companies go public. “His experience is unmatched.”
Also significant, Dorsey said, is the fact that two other big cloud-computing companies also decided to participate in the funding. Those investors are Salesforce Ventures and the Slack Fund, which are the venture capital arms of cloud computing companies Salesforce.com Inc. and Slack Technologies, Inc.
“You hope that you’re building something so compelling that the best investors in the world want to be a part of it,” Dorsey said, and that is the case here.
“I think Zylo’s going to be one of our big breakout success stories here over the next five to 10 years,” said Dorsey—the former ExactTarget CEO who steered it to a $2.5 billion acquisition by Salesforce.com Inc. in 2013.
High Alpha Capital; GGV Capital of Menlo Park; SV Angel of San Francisco; and Hyde Park Venture Partners, which has offices in both Indianapolis and Chicago; also participated in the latest round of Zylo funding. All four of these investors also participated in Zylo’s October 2016 seed funding.
Zylo has 23 employees, and CEO Eric Christopher said the new investment will allow the company to hire another 20 or so employees over the next 12 months or so.
“We’re growing really fast and we’re hiring fast,” Christopher said.
Zylo says it is managing more than 1 million unique SaaS user licenses and more than $1 billion of annual SaaS subscription spending on behalf of its customers. The company would not disclose revenue.
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