INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The pandemic may feel all-encompassing at the moment, but Confluent announced a $250 million Series E today, showing that major investment
continues in spite of the dire economic situation at the moment
At that point the company was valued at a mere $2.5 billion
Investors obviously see a lot of potential here.Coatue Management led the round, with help from Altimeter Capital and Franklin Templeton
Existing investors Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital also participated
emerged from LinkedIn in 2011
Confluent launched in 2014 and has gained steam, funding and gaudy valuations along the way.CEO and co-founder Jay Kreps reports that growth
continued last year when sales grew 100% over the previous year
A big part of that is the cloud product the company launched in 2017
much as attracting users, who can become customers at some point as they make their way through the sales funnel
The beauty of the cloud product is that you can buy by the sip.The company has big plans for the product this year
Although Kreps was loath to go into detail, he says that there will be a series of changes coming up this year that will add significantly
infrastructure deployment
And so it has to become much, much more elastic and scalable as it really changes how it works
this big with a valuation this high and an institutional investor like Franklin Templeton involved typically means an IPO could be the next
step, Kreps was not ready to talk about that, except to say the company does plan to begin behaving in the cadence of a public company with
a set of quarterly earnings, just not for public consumption yet.The company was founded in 2014
It has 1,000 employees and has plans to continue to hire and to expand the product
