Monday, June 29, 2009

$8 Million More of 'Under the Mattress' Money for CloudSwitch

Here's an item that'll spark some jealousy in any entrepreneur who finds it tough raising venture capital in the current climate: CloudSwitch has raised a second round of $8 million in venture capital funding, led by new investor Commonwealth Capital Ventures. This follows a first round of $7.4 million that was first reported here on Innovation Economy in January.

I spoke to founder and VP/products Ellen Rubin late on Friday, as the company was moving into new office space in Burlington. (The funding news was under embargo until this morning.) The company now has 18 people, including new CEO John McEleney (formerly CEO at SolidWorks), co-founder and CTO John Considine (formerly of Sun and Pirus), chief architect Fred Oliveira (who formerly worked on EMC's Atmos cloud offering), VP of product management George Moberly (ex of EMC and BladeLogic), and VP of engineering Sean Henry (formerly of RSA.)

"We weren't really actively looking for money," Rubin said. "But there was a fair amount of pre-emptive interest at attractive valuations. Having John McEleney join was the catalyst. He's pretty well-regarded, and had a phenomenal track record at SolidWorks. He knew the Atlas and Matrix guys [who led CloudSwitch's first round], and has known the guys at Commonwealth for a long time." Eliot Katzman is the partner at Commonwealth who will join CloudSwitch's board; Matrix and Atlas participated in the new round. CloudSwitch's objective is to help make the low costs and flexibility of cloud computing services safe for enterprise use.

"This is one of those funny situations," Rubin told me. "We'd just raised the A, and we weren't going to be looking for more money until well into 2010. This is just money to have, so we can focus on getting the product out the door. You just put it in the bank and let it sit there."

Nice situation to be in...

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Three CEO Moves: Viximo, CloudSwitch, Paragon Lake

I don't usually track executive comings and goings here, but three interesting ones have happened recently (not all officially announced yet):

    1. Rob Frasca has been replaced as CEO at virtual goods company Viximo by Dayna Grayson from North Bridge, who will serve as acting CEO. North Bridge is one of the company's investors.

    2. Long-time SolidWorks CEO John McEleney is taking over as CEO at stealthy start-up CloudSwitch from founder Ellen Rubin, who is staying on in a key executive role.

    3. At custom jewelry site Paragon Lake, they're bringing in former BrassRing CEO Deb Besemer as CEO, and moving founder Matt Lauzon over to COO.


Here's a recent post from Lauzon on "Hiring the Right CEO."

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

$7.4 million for CloudSwitch, Which Aims to Make Cloud Computing Safe for the Enterprise

Better late than never?

Two Boston-area venture capital firms just put the finishing touches on a $7.4 million A round for Bedford, Mass.-based CloudSwitch this week. It's the first investment in a pure-play cloud computing start-up here in Massachusetts that I'm aware of. Matrix Partners incubated CloudSwitch in its offices for much of 2008, and Atlas Venture joined in the funding round.

The company was founded by Ellen Rubin (CEO) and John Considine (CTO), both of whom had earlier worked at other Matrix portfolio companies. Rubin had headed up marketing for Netezza, leaving last February following the company's 2007 IPO; Considine had worked at Pirus Systems, acquired by Sun back in 2002.

Rubin isn't saying much about what they're up to, other than that they're developing software to help enterprises manage cloud computing services. "I don't want to say much for competitive reasons, but we're working with partners and customers now, and building out our offering," she told me today. She said they'll be ready to divulge more in the spring. The company has about ten employees, and office space in Bedford.

Rubin says they're hiring, but there's no listing of jobs on the company's one-page Web site. Rubin says they're working with recruiters, and talking with folks who're part of the founding team's network.

"I've been paying attention to cloud ideas for about 18 months," says David Skok of Matrix. "John [Considine] is a storage guy, but I kept saying, 'Go look at what Amazon is doing. It's totally amazing.' He came back with a cloud idea, and I introduced him to Ellen. Then we spent a lot of time working with them to shape a defensible idea."

Axel Bichara is the Atlas Venture partner who'll take a seat on the board. Also on the board at CloudSwitch are Jit Saxena, CEO of Netezza, and Andy Palmer, a serial entrepreneur who has been involved with Bowstreet, Vertica, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Byledge.

The only previous mention of the company I've been able to find is this quick name-check from GigaOm.

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