As fast as things change in Silicon Valley, one constant over the years is the measurement for a young company’s success: momentum, profitability and a sustainable business model – at least for the venture capital community – followed by success in the public markets. Venture capitalists have created a multi-billion dollar (and very often a winner takes all) business of identifying the key attributes that make an early-stage company successful in its goals of world domination.
For years, experts have produced books, articles, videos, blogs and events to help entrepreneurs and investors alike identify the best practices and patterns for success. Yet, the market continues to produce outliers that defy each pattern and subsequently create new definitions for success. So how does an entrepreneur like me select the most promising candidate company to join?
Throughout my career, I have helped build businesses that were outrageously successful, and a couple that fell a bit short of expectations. Having experienced them both, I know it is never just one component of the business that contributed to the organization’s success or failure but the combination and alignment of various components. I believe Webscale has that perfect winning combination representative of why many of us choose entrepreneurship as our own journey to success.
And I’m not the only one who shares this belief. Webscale recently announced a $12M round of financing led by Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) with participation from Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), Grotech Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). So, here are my top 8 reasons I believe Webscale is among the most promising young companies around, why I joined them, and why you should too:
Timing: Timing really is everything. Layer 4-7 services are moving to the cloud because traditional deployment models and form factors are not well suited to support the requirements of cloud-hosted applications. Functionality like optimization, security and load balancing need to sit alongside the application and follow the same utility rules. This transition to the cloud is being led by customers in the broad mid-market segment because they have the most to gain in terms of competitive and cost advantages, as well as time to market. Multi-cloud workload support is becoming critical for business continuity, security and compliance.
Team: All-stars! The Webscale world-class executive team is on board and believes firmly in our vision. With our breadth of relevant enterprise and startup experience across market segments that include SaaS, CDN and WAN optimization, we are well positioned to execute.
Market Size: Size matters. The mid-market represents at least 700,000 businesses globally and each of these businesses can directly benefit financially from using Webscale. The ROI of a Webscale end-to-end deployment is without comparison for companies of any size looking to harness the potential of the cloud to scale their online interactions.
Concept: Brilliance unleashed. Disruption is never easy and the disruption of a multi-million dollar market with a new perspective presents an even bigger challenge. Webscale redefines the concept of the traditional hardware ADC appliance, moving away from monolithic data center deployments to an agile and elegant cloud-based and 100% SaaS solution. By focusing on the needs of the mid-market, the consumption model of the cloud, and web-enabled relevant use cases, Webscale is building forward-looking use cases rather than just feature comparisons for the existing ADC solutions that are based on outdated needs.
Execution: Strategy delivering already. The Webscale cloud platform has been producing revenues since early 2014 and we’ve made significant enhancements in that time. Because it is delivered in a true software-as-a-service model, every customer continually benefits from our latest R&D. Webscale is already a proven success, currently serving web applications ranging from a few thousand users a day to millions each month. In 2016 alone, we processed more than $1B in revenue and delighted more than 8M visitors to our customers’ websites. Webscale aligns with its customers’ businesses and stays ahead of their needs with constant innovation.
Proof-points: Early wins and exploding momentum. Webscale boasts 60+ revenue producing customers, from small businesses to Fortune 200 companies, ranging from 2500 – 5M in monthly visitors with $1M-$50B in revenue. Geographically, Webscale is deployed around the world including US, Canada, UK, China, India and Australia with POCs in progress in other regions too. Webscale leads the e-commerce market segment and is now expanding into the broader mid-market with rigorous momentum.
Business model: Win-win for all. The Webscale go-to-market model is 100% SaaS-based, leveraging all the cloud has to offer. Customers benefit from constant innovation, reduced capital expenditures and operating costs, and a simple deployment model. Cloud-based consumption models are here to stay and offer so much more than cost and deployment efficiencies, security and scalability to meet customer needs.
Funding: Money talks. Webscale has raised a total of $20M from its seed round in 2013, to our most recent round of $12M in September 2016 enabling us to execute to our vision with the support of our board, the investment community and of course, our valued customers.
I’m looking forward to staying in touch as my journey with Webscale continues. I invite you to contact us for more information about the Webscale converged platform, our global customers and the latest news on our success.
