Canberra-founded Instaclustr raises $20.8 million led by New York City firm Level Equity

Canberra-founded, Palo Alto-based startup Instaclustr has raised $20.8 million in a funding round led by New York City private equity firm Level Equity.

Launched by Ben Bromhead, Adam Zegelin, Peter Lilley, and Doug Stuart in 2013, Instaclustr is an ‘open source as a service’ platform, delivering fully hosted and managed big data technology solutions in open source form.

Among others, the platform currently provides technologies including Apache Cassandra and Apache Spark, with others including Elasticsearch and Apache Ignite on the list to be added to the platform.

The idea came to Bromhead and Zegelin through a need they had themselves faced while using the Apache Cassandra database for a project and finding there was little information or assistance available for new users.

With the startup now serving more than 100 customers, including the likes of Campaign Monitor and Blackberry, it reported its revenues have grown 300 percent over the last 24 months.

The fresh funding, which follows a US$7 million ($9.6 million) round from investors including Bailador and Our Innovation Fund in late 2016, will be put towards helping the business further its international expansion.

Instaclustr also plans to double its headcount over the next year, with particular focus on its Australian engineering and development teams.

Bromhead, who has moved to the US to head up the international expansion, said, “I am really excited by this investment and the continued growth of the company. I am also proud that the company will continue to invest in building our engineering and technical operations teams back in Australia.”

Ben Levin, founder and partner at Level Equity, said the startup has earned a reputation as a trusted enterprise partner through its “unwavering dedication to 100 percent open source technologies and fast, expert support”.

“Demand for flexible solutions capable of addressing mission-critical data infrastructure is growing exponentially, and this is reflected in the outstanding financial performance Instaclustr has demonstrated in the last several years.

“The comprehensive managed platform Instaclustr offers is well positioned as a singular backend answer to meet the entire scope of customers’ requirements when it comes to managing the data layer.”

Image: Adam Zegelin and Ben Bromhead. Source: Supplied.