London, UK – September 29, 2014 – Outlyer, a London start-up providing infrastructure monitoring software for online services, has closed an early seed round of $800k (£480k). The round was led by Nic Brisbourne at Forward Partners and includes angel investors John Powell, the co-founder of Alfresco, John Hughes, the Chairman of Just-Eat.com, Andy Mcloughlin, co-founder of Huddle, and Troy Collins co-founder of SecretEscapes.com.
Launched in October 2013, the company has been working alongside some of London’s largest online services, including Rackspace, Blinkbox, and Hive Home from British Gas, to develop its monitoring software and is already generating 6-figure revenue.
The software saves companies considerable time and effort in monitoring their online services, alerting them to broken features and downtime that ultimately affect the end users’ experience. If not addressed quickly, these issues impact the brand and revenue of the company’s service.
“The way we develop today’s online services has changed dramatically with Cloud and DevOps, but the monitoring tools available have not,” said Grant Smith, former Head of Operations at Hive Home. “Outlyer have taken a modern and refreshing approach to monitoring with a product that really helps online services run a better service for their users”.
The funding will help Outlyer accelerate its product development and hiring as the product becomes available to the public later this year.
“Very few start-ups can say they have 6-figure revenue and brand-name customers in their first year,” said Nic Brisbourne, Managing Partner at Forward Partners. “Outlyer have achieved this by building a great product that solves a real pain point for online services”.
John Powell, who has previously built two category leading enterprise software businesses, has joined the Outlyer board to advise on behalf of its investors.
About Outlyer
Outlyer (www.outlyer.com) develops monitoring software that alerts teams running online services about problems with the service before its users are affected. Founded by David Gildeh (CEO), Steven Acreman (CTO) and Colin Hemmings (Chief Architect), Outlyer is currently working with several large online services to develop the product for launch to the public later this year.
About Forward Partners
Forward Partners is an investment studio focused on early stage eCommerce companies. Managing Partner Nic Brisbourne has led over 25 investments in his 13 years as a VC in London and Silicon Valley; he also authors Europe’s most popular VC blog: The Equity Kicker.
For Media Inquiries, please contact:
David Gildeh (CEO & Co-Founder Outlyer)
press@outlyer.com | +44 (0) 800 808 5240