Announcing our $7M Seed raise lead by DNX

Emery Allen, a writer and artist from Cleveland wrote something that I've pondered often in the last few months. She asks, "Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences."

In the world of business, discussing souls, togetherness, and coincidences is taboo. Yet as I sit here writing these words - I'm struck by the profound serendipity of just having raised a $7M seed financing lead by DNX ventures and all the wonderful lessons, people, and experiences that have happened in the short time since closing the round.

I was introduced to Q Motiwala of DNX by our first investor, board member, my extraordinary and dear friend, Yash Hemaraj of BGV. Yash led our pre-seed financing in 2017 and took a risk on a crazy napkin sketch of a database that would run in 100s of locations worldwide. I've been pitching products, companies, and ideas for almost two decades now and know the fundraising game at some depth. I've met hundreds of funds, principals, and partners over the last 15 years. Yet here I was, meeting Q over zoom and unable to put my finger on the incredibly rich presence, thoughtfulness, and authenticity he possessed. A few days later, Q invited me to join him on a hike (socially distanced) to talk more. What unfolded on that hot June day by the San Francisco bay's foaming sands in Foster city was incredibly special. As Q and I spoke - it became very evident to me that he and DNX are special. The valley and Sand Hill Road are full of brilliant, accomplished, and ambitious people. But Q was more than brilliant, accomplished, and ambitious - there was a "Je ne sais quoi" about him - I still don't know what it is, but I've put it down to a powerful combination of authenticity, a genuine curiosity in people and a very refreshing self-effacing honesty and humility that frankly far too few people on Sandhill Road possess.

Today, I'm incredibly pleased and excited to announce our oversubscribed $7M seed financing lead by DNX. All our incredible investors from the last pre-seed round participated - my heartfelt gratitude to BGV (Yash Hemaraj), Partech partners (Nicolas ElBaze), Fusion Fund (Lu Zhang), Sway (Najib Khouri), and Shasta (Nitin) for underwriting the crazy napkin sketch in 2017.

I'm equally excited to share that Rob Fry and Jon Gelsey are joining our board of directors as independents. Rob was one of the architects of Netflix as it transformed from a DVD by mail company to the global streaming giant and viscerally faced all the problems we strive to solve at Macrometa while building Netflix. Jon was the CEO of Auth0 and Xnor.ai (acquired by Apple recently), and he invented and wrote the book on building products and companies that primarily sell to developers and architects. At Macrometa, we do just two things: (1) We build great products, and (2) We sell great products. We are incredibly fortunate to get Rob and Jon's help to build and sell products we hope will enable developers to do things locked in their imaginations and held back by the complexities and arcane architectures of the cloud.

Finally, I'm super excited to say Welcome to Justin Johnson, who joins us to lead our marketing, developer experience, and relations. Justin is an inspiration and a hero to me - I've followed his work at Keen.io and then at StackPath, where he helped build and market exceptional products and then formed vibrant developer communities around them.

Durga and I would be remiss if we didn't thank our team members for their hard work from the first day we started in 2017. To the Macrometa family spread across the US, Europe, and India - congrats to all of us - the edge is our oyster.

(Join our team - see our open positions in engineering, marketing, sales, and customer success - we don't care where you live or work from - we have always been, and will always be about enabling you to do your best work from where ever you are happiest doing it).