HYCU has pulled in a $53 million B-round, giving it yet more cash for its SaaS-based data protection offerings.
The round saw participation from all the A-round investors, including big names Bain Capital and Acrew Capital. Atlassian Ventures and Cisco Capital joined in as strategic investors. The cash will help to pay for several go-to-market initiatives including bringing to market a developer-led SaaS service and other offerings. There will be new positions in alliances, product marketing and customer success.
CEO Simon Taylor said “Adding strategic investment from Atlassian Ventures and Cisco Investments, along with the ongoing support from Bain Capital and Acrew is a testament to what the team has developed and is delivering to customers worldwide.” He continued, “HYCU fundamentally believes there is a better way to solve data protection needs, and we are on track to deliver a profoundly simple and powerful solution before the end of the year.” Sounds interesting.
We hear that Taylor and his execs weren’t looking for new funding but, once Acrew Capital approached them this year, the interest from other investors became significant.
This B-round comes 15 months after HYCU raised $87.5 million in its A-round and takes total funding to $140.5 million.
HYCU’s roots go back a long way, having been spun out of Comtrade Software in 2018, and Comtrade has a history going back to 2016 and earlier. HYCU is growing fast. It enjoyed year-on-year bookings growth of 150 percent in 2021 and had a successful first 2022 quarter close, with projections to achieve the same growth rate in 2022.
HYCU tripled revenue in the past 12 months, stayed with a 135 percent net-retention rate, maintained a 91 net promoter score (NPS), claiming it’s the highest in the industry for data protection companies, and saw a 4x increase in valuation in the last year.
Matt Sonefeldt, head of investor relations at Atlassian Ventures, said “We’re excited to welcome HYCU to the Atlassian Ventures family and believe its approach to data protection as a service creates immense potential for our 200,000+ cloud customers.” That’s a nice potential selling opportunity for HYCU.
HYCU is now well-funded to weather any downturn and well-positioned with regard to the two great forces transforming the data protection industry: changing on-premises backup software to SaaS offerings, and the whole cyber resiliency/anti-ransomware movement. HYCU is on top of both trends and virtually every other vendor is doing the same. For example, Veritas is making NetBackup a SaaS-based product. Cohesity is moving its products set to services. Commvault has its Metallic SaaS offering. Veeam is on the SaaS train. This is a rising tide lifting all boats.
And all vendors now regard ransomware countermeasures as table stakes. Anyone not adopting them is going to get left behind.
