Sonar Software, a tech stack management startup, raised a $12 million Series A to triple its 25-person team and make its product more collaborative.
San Francisco’s Craft Ventures led the round, with participation from Slack, Valor EP, Parade VC and SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter. The round brings Sonar’s total funds to $15.7 million, according to a news release.
Sonar, founded in October 2018, gives product developers a blueprint for how software changes may affect other aspects of the company, such as sales and marketing teams. By implementing the Sonar software, the developer can make sure their changes don't have unforeseen consequences that need troubleshooting.
“The last thing you would do is go take out a wall without a blueprint of the house that shows what’s behind it,” said Sonar Co-Founder and CEO Brad Smith. “Prior to using Sonar, a lot of our customers didn’t have a blueprint of how all their technology works.”
Smith and co-founder Jack McGlinchey started working on Sonar full-time in January 2020 and raised their first seed round right before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the country. The business-to-business software company has about 70 customers, including Atlanta companies Terminus, FullStory and CallRail.
Despite hardships from growing remotely, the startup’s revenue has grown by nearly 3,000% in the past year, according to a news release. Smith plans to have 75 employees by the end of January 2022 to accommodate that acceleration.
Smith attributed that growth to companies’ needs for more collaboration tools as their teams went remote. Employees couldn’t brainstorm software changes together or have a troubleshooting session. Sonar gives developers the ability to see exactly how product changes would affect the rest of the company without needing those interactions.
Smith also created a community of operations professionals called the Wizards of Ops, which has about 2,000 members. While not directly related to Sonar, that community facilitates brainstorming and networking among developers from different companies.
“Because it’s got the association with Sonar, people have realized that we’ve created a phenomenal product to fix some of these problems that have persisted for years and have a massive group of some of the best thought leaders across the globe,” Smith said.
Now, Smith is looking to add more feedback capabilities into the Sonar software, meaning the developer could leave notes on the technology blueprint that gives more context and allows for more teammate collaboration.
