tech story

Sumo Logic, Helping companies to get real-time insight into data.

Data is the most important asset today, and it has become essential for every company to safeguard their company as well as client data from any external threat. The maintenance process for data has generated new long queues for the company employees, and it has become quite difficult to properly maintain and analyze the data at the same time. For that, companies like Sumo Logic work and develop software that helps other companies to upkeep the data and analyze it in the most efficient way. The company is about ten years old has been doing great in the industry such that it has been able to bag contacts from big-name companies, like Google and Amazon.

About Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic is a software development company that mainly works to build log management and analytics software for companies, helping them to get real-time insight into data. Kumar Saurabh and Christian Beedgen founded Soft Logic in 2010. The company headquarters is based in Redwood City, California, USA. The company is into developing software based on IT operations, security analytics, cloud SIEM, data analytics, etc. It is a publically held company that trades on Nasdaq with ticker SUMO. As per the 2020 records, it made annual revenues worth $155 Million, and over 800 people are employed at Soft Logic.

The Back Story

Kumar Saurabh and Christian Beedgen, two of the developers of ArcSight, a cyber security software, founded Sumo Logic in April 2010. The company received its initial funding from names like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, etc. The company built its flagship product, a cloud-based elastic petabyte-scale platform that helps companies to collect, manage and analyze their enterprise log data in the most efficient way, saving on time and money. Being a cloud-based product, it provides access to data ion fingertips. In 2012, the company released another software, the Sumo Logic Free, deployed on AWS and Sumo Logic for VMware.
In a Series B round of funding held in January 2012, Sumo Logic raised $15 million, where it also unveiled a new cloud-based log management platform. In June 2015, the company had another, Series E round of funding, where it raised a sum of $160.5 million in venture capital. The next product of the company, a data analytic platform came in 2016, and in 2017, it introduced machine data analytics service. Then in 2018, the company partnered with Google Cloud Platform and also integrated its software with TensorFlow. The same year, it introduced cloud SIEM and added it to its machine data analytics platform. In May 2019, the company had its first IPO, and it went public on Nasdaq.
Sumo Logic has won some awards and recognitions as well. It was named among the ten Most Innovative Companies by RSA in 2012 and won the Audience Choice Awards for Performance Monitoring in the same year. Gartner named the company ‘Cool Vendor’ in 2014, and in 2019, Fortune added the company to its list of 50 Best Workplaces in Technology. Forbes named Sumo Logic one of the 100 Best Enterprise Security Products in the same year.

The CEO at Sumo Logic

Ramin Sayar is the residing CEO at Sumo Logic. He has got a graduate degree in B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as an MBA from San Jose State University. For the past twenty-plus years, Sayar has worked at some prominent positions at various big-name companies. He has held the position of Product Line Marketing Manager at iPlanet and Netscape. He was the Director of Products and Solutions at TIBCO and the Senior Director of Products at Mercury Software. Sayar has also been the Vice President of Products and Strategy at HP Software. He joined VMware for five years leading the Cloud Management Business Unit of the company. After VMware, he joined Sumo Cloud in December 2014 and became the CEO of the company.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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Hans Robertson, got the idea of Verkada when fifty iPads were stolen from his company.

Verkada offers cloud-based consumer security solutions for businesses and organizations. Filip Kaliszan, James Ren, and Benjamin Bercovitz are the three Stanford graduates who co-founded Verkada along with Hans Robertson. Hans has co-founded another company before Verkada and served as the COO of the same. Currently, Filip Kaliszan is the CEO of the company and Hans Robertson is the Executive Chairman. Verkada was founded only five years ago and within a small time, it has become the talk of the physical security industry.

About Verkada Inc

Verkada is a physical security company that builds cameras, access control systems, environmental sensors, and alarms. The company builds cloud-based software platforms to access high-end hardware security products and make buildings safer. Verkada’s headquarters are based in San Mateo, California, and have customers across the globe. Their customers increased by nineteen folds between 2017 and 2018.

It has also received many awards and recognitions including Top Startups (LinkedIn), AI 50 Most Promising AI Firms (Forbes 2020), Enterprise Tech 30, etc. In January 2021, the company also became one of the 100 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area 2021 (Built-in). Last year the company crossed the $1 billion mark valuation after its Series C funding round.

Founding Idea

As it is said that every great idea emerges problem the problem, the story of Verkada is also somewhat similar. Before Verkada was founded, Hans was busy with his company Meraki (now Cisco Meraki). One day he found that fifty iPads were stolen from his company and that the video cameras in the security system were also not working for months. He realized the need for high-end security cameras in the market integrated with cloud-based software. So, Hans along with the other three co-founders decided to build a company to solve this problem. The goal was to keep data secure yet at the same time use AI to train the cameras for taking clearer photos, especially during suspicious situations.

Towards the Success

They started working on the product right away and launched beta testing in 2017 with two camera models. The company had to struggle very hard especially during the seed and Series A funding round because only a few could see the vision and potential behind the idea. Investors started showing interest in Verkada after it appeared in the Forbes 2019 list of Next Billion-Dollar Startups. It also became one of the top companies in the AI category (Forbes). After these two big features, the company successfully raised $40 million in Series B funding and the valuation of the company became $540 million.
In January 2020, the Series C funding round of Verkada took place (led by Felicis Ventures) in which it raised $80 million. The total funding received till Series C summed up to $139 million and the valuation of the company became $1.6 billion. Verkada became a billion-dollar company only after three years of launching its first product. Later in 2020 the company also launched its first access control device. The idea behind this new product is to integrate security cameras and lock in a single platform. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company also decided to distribute free surveillance kits to important organizations (like healthcare and medical businesses).

Recent Events

In October 2020, news about the Verkada breach broke out in the news as the whole world witnessed the compromise of its security systems. A group of tech-savvy hackers infiltrated the camera systems of Verkada everywhere from hospitals to jails. This included 150,000 cameras in active surveillance. The hackers not only broke into the live surveillance feeds but also gained access to the archives of Verkada cameras. Later the hackers claimed that they founder Verkada’s super admin password publicly available on the internet.

Filip Kaliszan – CEO of Verkada Inc

Filip Kaliszan is a Standford graduate who completed both his bachelor’s and masters in computer science. He was also a computer science research assistant at the university for several months. In 2007, he founded CourseRank Inc which came under Chegg after three years. In 2010 Filip joined Chegg as the Director of Product Management and also worked at Guidebook Inc until co-founding Verkada.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

2U, a company providing educational services in the era of online learning.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

2U is an American company founded in 2008 for providing educational services. The founders of the company are John Katzman, Jeremy Johnson, and Christopher J. Paucek. The main idea behind founding 2U is to provide proper online degree and non-degree programs. Its headquarters is based in Lanham, Maryland, US and it is currently serving users on a global scale. 2U mainly provided a SaaS platform to its clients (educational institutions) and along with coursework design and infrastructure support.

About 2U

2U has always focussed on providing top-quality online education and services by establishing contracts with top-tier partners. Recently, the company has acquired edX (an American MOOCs provider that was created by Harvard and MIT) which has led to its exposure to a broader audience base and hence more opportunity for growth. 2U to date has collaborated with more than 230 top-class universities to create approximately 3,500 digital programs. The company has more than 40 million global learners who are benefiting from the services of 2U. Recently, the company has also announced a partnership with the University of Singapore intending to expand online professional education.

Early Days

In 2008, the co-founder of The Princeton Review, John Katzman founded 2U originally naming it 2tor after his pet dog. He decided to bring two other important members on board who were Christopher Paucek who was the former CEO of Hooked on Phonics and Jeremy Johnson, a tech entrepreneur. These three together became the co-founders of 2U.

When they started the company, Paucek became the CEO of the business and he is continuing to be so even today. The co-founders saw this business sector as a good opportunity and during that time there were very few top-tier universities that provided online instruction. In 2009, the company rolled out its first online teaching degree in collaboration with the University of Southern California (USC). Later, the company again collaborated with USC to launch an online degree in social work.

In 2011 two new universities partnered with 2U, namely, Georgetown University’s School of Nursing and Health and Kenan-Flagler Business School (University of North Carolina). The latter started offering an online MBA degree through 2U. In 2012, John Katzman left the 2U team to launch Noodle Partners (a company in the education management sector).

Success and Growth

As the number of universities partnered with 2U kept increasing every day, the company became more famous. This eventually led the company to raise $10 million in venture capital in 2013 and went public in the next year by offering 9.2 million shares. In the same year, two new members joined the board of the company, Sallie Krawcheck, and Earl Lewis. By the end of 2014 schools like Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley signed up with 2U for offering online degrees. In 2015, Yale University partnered with 2U to offer a full-time, online master of medical science degree. By the end of the year, more than 12,000 students enrolled in the 2U platform.

In 2017, as a part of 2U’s strategy, it started acquiring education companies. It included GetSmarter and Trilogy Education. In 2018, the company partnered with Harvard University to offer the Harvard Business Analytics Program (HBAP) for experienced professionals. It also tied up with the University of London to offer its first undergraduate program. The company witnessed a large growth in its gross revenue during 2020 because of the shifting of education to online learning. To expand 2U more in the online marketplace, it acquired edX in June 2021 for $800 million in cash.

About the Founders

John Katzman is a famous personality in the American EdTech sector who has established many companies to assist students with their careers. He attended Princeton University and later co-founded The Princeton Review and served as its CEO until 2007. He is currently the CEO of The Noodle Companies.

Jeremy Johnson apart from co-founding 2U also co-founded Andela and currently serving as its CEO. He was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 for two years consecutively.

Christopher Paucek is the co-founder and current CEO of 2U. He received several highly-rated CEO awards from Glassdoor. In 1993, he co-founded his first company, Cerebellum Corporation, and also served as the CEO of Smarterville Inc before co-founding 2U.

Annasha

Momentive, The company that was earlier known for its popular product SurveyMonkey.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

Though the word of mouth has been the most effective way of marketing, people before the internet did not have any reliable source to actually get through those experiences based reviews on things, rather going through TV ads or Newspapers. After the internet came into being and computers reached every household, people came with the idea to build websites and software that can help people get through authentic reviews on things and such that those people could make up their mind on what they should buy or leave. Momentive Inc. is a company that works on a similar idea and develops cloud-based experience management software for companies so that these companies can offer their clients genuine reviews on things like market insight, brand insight, company atmosphere for aspirants, and customer experience, etc.

About Momentiv Inc.

Momentive is a 22 years old software development company founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley and Chris Finley. It is a publically traded company that develops software for experience management. The company trades on Nasdaq as MNTV, whereas the headquarters of the company is based in San Mateo, CA, United States. The company has its regional offices set up in locations like San Mateo, Portland, Seattle, Dublin, Ottawa, London, Sydney, etc, and serves its customers worldwide. Momentive provides cloud-based experience management and survey software services, Momentive, GetFeedback, and SurveyMonkey being the most popular products by the company. As of 2020, 1,220 people are employed at various Momentive offices, and it made annual revenues worth US$233.5 million in the same year, with 25,000,000 registered to its services.

Founding Story of Momentive

Ryan Finley and Chris Finley founded Momentive Inc. as SurveyMonkey in 1999. The company was one of its kind and launched its first product, a consumer-oriented survey platform. Due to the unique idea of the company, it became successful from day one. The service it provided was free, and many of its services remain free till today.
In the year 2009, Dave Goldberg joined SurveyMonkey as the CEO, who helped the company grow really fast. The same year, Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital took over some of the majority shares in SurveyMonkey. In 2013, the company raised $800 million in debt, and the company became a unicorn with a valuation worth $1.35 billion. The next year, MonekySurvey received $250 million from companies like Google Capital and Morgan Stanley, etc.
In August 2014, SurveyMonkey acquired Fluidware, a competitor survey company based in Canada. This purchase was followed by the acquisitions of TechValidate in 2015, Usabilla, and GetFeedback in 2019. The company also acquired some survey tools, including Precision Polling, Wufoo, and Zoomerang, etc., for the purpose of adding some more features to its existing platforms and other products to its product line.
In June 2021, SurveyMonkey changed its name to Momentive. The news of the acquisition of Momentive by Zendesk Inc. also came in October month of the same year. Though the merger is still to happen, the amount is already decided, and that is nearly $4 billion.

The CEO at Momentive

SurveyMonkey, aka Momentive, had seen the most growth in the leadership of Dave Goldberg as the CEO. But after his death in 2015, Zander Lurie was named the CEO of the company. Lurie is a native American who is also known as one of the leading business executives as well as a board member of GoPro. He has a graduate degree from the University of Washington and an MBA from Emory University. Lurie has worked at companies like GoPro as the Senior Vice President and CBS Interactive as the CFO. He also co-founded CoachArt in 2001. In 2015, he became the chairman of the board of SurveyMonkey 2015, and in 2016, he was named the CEO of the company.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Altium, 35 years old PC-based electronics design software development company.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

Integrated Circuits are the biggest discovery in the field of IT and electronics. This little device has helped the IT industry to grow rapidly and computers reach every home as PCs. These circuits are small in size, but there is a lot of work done over it. These are built on printed circuit boards with thousands of lines of code written on them. So building an IC is a huge task, which includes multiple phases. Many software companies write codes for ICs and without these companies, it will be really difficult to make a single IC chip. Altium is one of those software companies that build software for companies that make printed circuit boards. The company is one of the leading software development companies, serving companies based in different parts of the world, including the US, Australia, China, Japan, etc.

About Altium

Altium is a more than 35 years old PC-based electronics design software development company. Nick Martin founded Altium in 1985, and today, the company is known as one of the leading EDA/FPGA software development companies. It is an Australian company with its regional headquarters based in countries like the United States, Australia, China, Japan, and some countries of Europe. The company develops software products for industries that build EDA, Printed circuit boards, FPGA, Embedded Systems, Electronics Design, etc., including telecommunication, automation, aerospace, and defense, etc. Altium Designer is the most popular product by Altium. Apart from that, the company is known for its products like Altium Concord Pro, Altium NEXUS, Vault, CircuitStudio, CircuitMaker, TASKING, Octopart, Ciiva, Upverter, etc.

Founding Altium

Nicholas Martin founded Altium as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in 1985, while he was already working at the University of Tasmania as an electronics designer. The idea of his company came to him when he was working at the company and thought of making more affordable electronic products for people. He merged the electronics design into PC platforms and launched the first DOS-based printed circuit board layout and design tool in 1985. The next year, Protel Systems partnered with HST Technology Pty Ltd. and started its international journey, too. The same year, the company partnered with ACCEL Technologies, Inc. to provide customer support to clients based in the US, Canada, and Mexico. The company brought new software in the following years, including Protel Schematic for DOS, Autotrax, and Easytrax, etc.

At the beginning of the next decade, Compay started to develop FPGA, PCB, and embedded software under its single data model project. In 1991, the company came with the first Windows-based PCB design system for Windows, named Advanced Schematic/PCB 1.0. In 1999, Altium went public on the Australian Securities Exchange. The company changed its name from Protel Systems to Compay in 2001 and made some important acquisitions like Tasking (2001), Hoschar AG (2002), Morfik Technology Pty Ltd. (2010), Octopart (2015), Ciiva (2015), Perception Software (2016), Upverter (2017), etc.
In the past few years, the company has expanded to Asia, Europe, Canada, and the US. As of 2019, the company made annual revenue worth US$171.8 million. The company is currently serving industries including automotive, aerospace, defence, and telecommunications, etc.

The CEO at Altium

Aram Mirkazemi is the CEO of Altium. He is a native of Iran and had come to Australia as a Refugee in the 80s. Though he wasn’t good at English at that time, it was Maths in which he excelled and got admission to the University of Tasmania. In the later years, Mirkazemi found his interest in computers and artificial intelligence as well. While he was still studying at the university, he received an offer from Nick Martin to join Altium (then Protel). For the past 30 plus years, he has served Altium in various positions, including the company’s CTO, senior executive VP of engineering, etc. In 2014, Mirkazemi became the CEO of Altium. He also founded Morfik, a software company that Altium acquired in 2010.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Instructure, Best known as the publisher of Canvas providing a web-based educational solution.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

We must admit that the past two years have been the toughest for the education sector. Schools and colleges being closed have raised many questions about the future of the young generation. Every government has tried to keep up with the education for schools and higher education institutions, but the best solutions came from the private sector in the form of educational software (LMS) and online websites. Companies that have been promoting online education through LMSs have come to the rescue and have helped the students to stay updated with their educational needs. Not only for the schools and other educational institutes but for the small to big companies, these LMSs have been like a boon. One of such LMS development companies includes Instructure.
Best known as the publisher of Canvas, Instructure is a thirteen years old American educational technology company. The company provides a web-based educational solution for K-12 students to students pursuing higher education as well as for corporate training.

About the Company

Instructure is an Educational Technology and Learning Management Systems provider from the US. The company headquarters is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, US, and it operates from seven different locations in the US, serving its clients from all over the world. As per the 2019 records, over 1200 people are working for Instructure, and the company made annual revenues worth $209.5 million in 2018. The Instructure educational products include Canvas, Catalog, Studio, Portfolium, MasteryConnect, Videri, CASE Benchmarks, and Item Bank, Navigate Item Bank, Academic Benchmarks, Certify, DataConnect, Program Assessment, Pathways, Canvas for Corporate Education, etc. Among all the products by Instructure, Canvas is the most popular product of the company.

The Back Story

Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley founded Instructure in 2008 when they were still at college. They were graduate students at BYU. The idea of Instructure came from the bad experience that the two co-founders had with the existing LMSs. They thought the existing ones were outdated, and no LMS developer companies were planning to upgrade them. Thus the two developed a new LMS under their newly built company, Instructure.
Josh Coates, the founder of Mozy, was the first investor the company got. He also became the first CEO of Instructure for the years 2010-2018. Instructure bagged its first big contract from Utah Education Network (UEN) in 2010, replacing Blackboard (one of the most preferred LMS of that time) in almost every college and university in the Utah area.
In 2011, the company launched officially Canvas LMS and made it available as open-source software for free. The software was also launched for iOS and Android devices. By 2013, the company reached almost 300 schools and colleges and built a customer base of 9 million users. The same year, Instructure held a Series D Funding raising $30 Million.
In 2015, Instructure came with its corporate LMS named Bridge and held a Series E funding raising $40 million. The company went public in November of the same year and started trading on New York Stock Exchange. The next year, the company was ranked number 4 on its Best Places to Work list by Glassdoor, whereas in 2018, it was ranked number 6 in the “Top Work Places” for large businesses list by Salt Lake Tribune. In March 2020, Thoma Bravo acquired Instructure for a sum of $2 billion. Thoma Bravo operates as its parent company, whereas Instructure operates as an independent company.

The Founders

Steve Daly is the current CEO of Instructure. He has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University (BYU). Daly has also got an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the same university. He started his career as a Mechanical Designer at Glumac and Associates. Later Daly became the Director of Marketing at Intel and stayed at the company for ten years. After leaving Intel in 2002, he joined Soronti in 2003 as the CEO but then switched to Avocent Corporation to become the Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy in 2003. He has also worked as the chairman and CEO of Ivanti for ten years. In July 2002, Daly joined Instructure as its CEO.

Yashica Vashishtha

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