Austrian automatic software deployment startup and Techstars grad Codeship has come a long way since its start in 2011 – and we don’t just mean the 4,031 miles it takes to get from Vienna to Boston.
And on Wednesday, the startup takes yet another big step forward. Codeship has announced that it has raised $2.6 million in Series A from Sigma Prime Ventures, Boston Seed Capital’s and Devonshire Investors. In total, the company has raised $3 million in funding. Sigma Prime investor John Simon will join the board of directors.
Though Moritz Plassnig, Florian Motlik and Manuel Weiss began working on the product back in 2011, it wasn’t until the summer of 2012 that the founding team made the decision to pursue the novel idea of continuous software deployment full-time.
“The product was up and running, and people were using it everyday, but we had other jobs,” Plassnig, Codeship’s CEO, told BostInno. That summer, the designer of the bunch, Weiss, floated the idea of moving to the United States to build the company. Plassnig and Motlik were of the same mind.
“To build a really successful software company, you have to move to the states,” posited Plassnig.
The startup, still in Vienna, decided to send in its application to accelerator Techstars Boston; in a matter of months, the decision was delivered. Codeship would be joining a handful of other promising companies in the Cambridge accelerator program, starting in February 2013.
The value provided by Codeship is clear, particularly to teams full of engineers struggling to reduce the risk of software bugs and release new software.
“Companies try to do it once a month. Then the whole team has to come together to put the changes online … It’s a really risky process, and you are always slow, and customers aren’t happy,” explained Plassnig.
Codeship has come up with a platform that allows software updates to be released quickly, automatically and multiple times a day. Companies are able to keep their software up-to-date, saving money and time, while keeping their customers pleased at every step of the process. The startup currently generating revenue from hundreds of software engineerings team across the world who are on its deployment platform.
In addition to the founding trio, Codeship employs three engineers. Plassnig said that the company has “long term plans to keep two offices” in Boston and Vienna “because it's easier … to hire better people, faster in Europe.”
“We can get the best talent in two different locations,” noted the chief executive, adding that the startup is looking to bring on business development people in Boston and engineers in Austria.
At the moment, Codeship is working out of the office of another European-to-Boston transplant company until the team finds its own space.
