Estonian cloud integration startup Cloutex has recently announced securing an angel investment from Tiit Paananen, Riivo Anton and Gerry Kodres. The amount of funding is 450.000 euros, yet the information about the shares given in exchange has not been disclosed according to the terms of the deal. This is Cloutex’s second investment, the first one taking place last year when they raised 40.000 euros.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Mike Reiner from Startup Wise Guys (SWG) took part in the first seed round, so we caught up with him to find out about his take on Cloutex. “We value both founders a lot and the space was interesting for us,” he said. “Riivo Anton and Gerri Kodres decided to provide a first pre-seed investment and SWG were invited to step in for a small additional amount. The progress from the first investment until now has taken the company from the team of two into a team of five, a working commercial prototype, first paying customers and a considerable seed round, so we are very happy with their progress so far.”
Anton, on the other hand, said that his main reason for investing in the cloud hub is based on the fact that “our main focus is on B2B solutions and Cloutex as a concept was interesting for us; they are well-balanced and have an experienced team and a good market opportunity.” However, as any other investor, his expectation is to look for an exit on good terms.
All roads lead to the Valley
For Peeter Mark, Cloutex’s CEO, there seem to be exciting times ahead. As a start, the startup will use the newly acquired investment “for further connectors development and for moving our business office to Silicon Valley while development will stay in Estonia.”
Both Reiner and Anton agreed on their vision for Cloutex: “We seek to make the company a number-one SaaS data integration platform. Cloutex can become a number-one data sync hub for SME’s… due to their unique technology that enables bi-directional full sync.”
At the moment, the company offers free as well as paid product packages (freemium model). Mark wants to add more connectors and have an aggressive marketing campaign on the US market where he wants to position his product.
From here on, it seems like it’ll be a lot of hard work for the Cloutex team, but they have Reiner’s words of wisdom to guide them (and other startups) along the way. “Build a large partner network that can drive traffic, support and increase credibility,” said Reiner. “Also move to where most of your customers are – they are probably concentrated in large markets such as Silicon Valley.”
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