Austin-based content collaboration software startup FileCloud announced Dec. 14 it has closed a $30M series A round.
The new funding was led by Silicon Valley-based investment firm Savant Growth. Also in on the equity funding was London-based Kennet Partners. The company also added a $10 million growth capital agreement with Avidbank.
But the news didn't end there. Along with the funding, FileCloud said it has hired Ray Downes as its new CEO, replacing Madhan Kanagavel, who founded the startup in 2016 and is now shifting his role to president and chief technology officer. Meanwhile, FileCloud announced Peter Melerud as its chief revenue officer. Both Melerud and Downes come to FileCloud from Kemp Technologies, which was acquired for $258 million by Progress Software last month and is a former portfolio company managed by Savant Growth.
“I am incredibly proud of our success bootstrapping the business to where it is today, and I can’t wait to begin this next phase of our journey," Kanagavel said in a statement.
FileCloud, which is the cornerstone software developed by CodeLathe Technologies Inc., has a platform that helps enterprise teams share files and other data across public and private clouds. It bolsters that with compliance and risk-protection features. The company's clients include governments, utilities and private businesses.
FileCloud currently has 89 employees, including 15 in Austin. It plans to more than double that headcount in the next couple years, with about 70% of those hires coming this year.
"We have been very successful at remote hiring and team integration over the last several years," Downes said via email. "This has served us well during the last two years. Going forward we plan to have a blend of location-based hiring to drive team building but also to continue with remote hiring. Austin will be a pivotal location in our global plans but specifically as a corporate HQ and base to scale the domestic Americas market. Our plans will also include a European base and a regional center to support the Asia market where we have had excellent traction over the last couple of years."
Downes declined to share revenue and valuation figures, but he said growth has averaged mid-30s over the last couple of years and that the startup has been cash flow positive for several years.
Madhan wrote the early lines of code to start the company and has largely been focused on product. When the company raised its new investment, he decided to shift his leadership further in that direction, Downes said.
"Madhan worked with the new investor groups to identify a CEO who fit the culture at FileCloud as well as having a track record of having grown a similar-sized business post-investment round," Downes wrote. "I worked for a former portfolio company of our lead investors for almost 10 years. It's a very similar situation in that I took over as CEO following a change of control event in 2012 but worked with the co-founders to scale the business."
Other examples of founders moving into technical leadership positions include WP Engine Inc., a WordPress technology company that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars,
