Drumroll… Good news coming your way. Boston-based Codeship announced yesterday that they’ve raised a 2,6-million-dollar Series A financing round led by Sigma Prime Ventures.
Founded in 2011, the company has created a SaaS tool offering integration and deployment for web applications. We caught up with co-founder and CEO Moritz Plassnig who shared the news and talked about the product and the next steps for the team.
How big is the investment and who is it from?
It’s a 2,6-million-dollar venture capital raised from Sigma Prime Ventures – John Simon, who is joining our board for Sigma Prime as a lead investor. Other participants in this round are Boston Seed Capital – Nicole Stata and Devonshire Investors – David Jegen as well as a couple of angels (from San Fracisco, Boston and Europe).
How are you going to use the funding?
We’ll invest heavily into our product. That means … making sure that we’re able to deliver an even better product for our existing and future customers. They are our most important asset, they are the reason why we raised the round and they will always be the foundation of our business.
How many people are you at the moment?
We started with a team of three, hired two more developers and worked like that until last summer when the sixth member joined our team. With this round and the expansion that comes along, we are probably looking to add a few members to our existing team.
Are you based in Boston at the moment, and are you planning to return to Vienna?
Our headquarters is and will remain in Boston. Of course we’ll focus on building the team both in Boston and Vienna, visiting the latter regularly; not just because of our office there but because we love the city and still consider ourselves as part of the Viennese startup scene. We wouldn’t be where we’re now if it weren’t for a lot of people inVienna who actively helped us. We are very grateful for that so in turn, we try to offer help to anyone who’s starting a company in Austria right now. Call us, email us, meet us. We’ll help you to avoid all those mistakes we made.
How have you been funded so far?
Through paying customers. Along the way, we raised money from Seedcamp, TechStars, Rothenberg Ventures and two angel investors: Semyon Dukach and Ty Danco.
What’s your business model?
For the ones interested in our SaaS product, we have a monthly and yearly subscription between $9/month and $500/month, and we have customers from all over the world as thousands of engineers are using our product.
What’s your next big thing?
It wouldn’t be a big thing if everybody already knew about it. But what I know for sure is that building a company takes a lot of hard work and sometimes it’s not about making a huge step forward but taking a lot of small steps, as it often comes down to the details.
Moving the needle every day, with every feature, conversation, meeting or hire – that’s the key.
Any piece of advice for other startups out there?
Build a product that creates value and let people pay for it. That’s the foundation of your business; fundraising is just a necessity to scale your business to a certain degree.
Stay tuned for more news on Codeship and their journey in the SaaS world.
