NextCloud Receives $1 M From Connecticut Innovations
May 8, 2012
A one-year-old company with five employees in Connecticut and seven in Sacramento is establishing its headquarters in Connecticut after receiving $1 million in funding from Connecticut Innovations and $200,000 from angel investors.
Jonathan Reeves, co-founder of NextCloud Inc., lives in Connecticut, and the vice president of finance, director of engineering, director of business development and a second engineer also are in Connecticut.
"The headquarters was always going to be in Connecticut," spokeswoman Betsy Gilbert said…
For the first year, the company was self-funded by the founders. Reeves is a serial entrepreneur, and sold one company in 2000 for $2.9 billion. The other founder, who is the chief technical officer, is in Sacramento.
Gilbert said receiving an investment from the quasi-public venture capital firm helps the company rent space at local data centers, move from home offices into office space in Wallingford, and spend more time working to find customers in the Northeast.
"They’ve already got customer engagements in the works in Connecticut and feel they’ll be able to close on a lot of customer relationships very soon," she said.
"They’re really grateful and excited about the engagement with CI," she said.
"NextCloud is an innovator in the growing field of cloud computing and is well positioned to capture market share as more and more organizations outsource IT and move their internal IT infrastructure to the Internet," said Claire Leonardi, chief executive officer and executive director of CI in a release announcing the investment. "I am delighted that this promising venture has decided to locate its U.S. headquarters in Connecticut – and extend a warm welcome. Helping innovators like NextCloud succeed in Connecticut is a top priority for CI and the Malloy administration."
Amazon has been dominant in cloud computing. NextCloud sees its niche as providing a holistic solution, tailoring each contract to a customer’s needs. They specialize in government, education and health care cloud computing solutions.
As the company expands its customer base in the Northeast, it will need to hire more engineers, sales people and administrators, Gilbert said.