Tidelift Amid Firms Lifted By Tide Of VC Capital

From open source software to high tech talent outsourcing, B2B firms at the startup (and stealth!) phases picked up funding this past week, including firms such as Tidelift.  The capital raising, by and large, is focused on growth, with an eye, for firms like Terminal, on global expansion.

Venture capital activity in the B2B space found software and data management firms securing funding.

Tidelift, an open source software firm, said this past week that it had garnered $15 million in Series A funding. The company said in a statement that the funding round was led by a series of investors, including General Catalyst, Foundry Group and former Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik. Three individuals – including Szulik, Ryan McIntyre (co-founder at Foundry) and Larry Bohn (managing director at General Catalyst) – have joined Tidelift’s board of directors.

Tidelift has said the funds will be used to expand operations. The company supports a number of open source technologies, with its Tidelift Subscription – which helps users discover projects and build applications – tracking more than 2.6 million open source packages.

Separately, Valimail, a California-based email authentication firm, stated that it raised $25 million through Series B financing. That round was spearheaded by Tenaya Capital, with additional investors including Bloomberg Beta and Flybridge Capital Partners. That money will go toward boosting staffing levels, said the company, with a focus on trust-based anti-impersonation services. The company has said its Identity Driven Email Anti-Impersonation (IDEA) platform helps to stop unauthorized users from using firms’ domains in email messages.

No more stealth mode for Okera. The data management firm, which has in the past been known as Cerebro Data, noted that its own Series A financing came to $12 million, with a cumulative capital raising to date of $14.6 million. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors such as Felicis Ventures and Capital One Growth Ventures. Ethan Kurzweil, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and Wesley Chan, Felicis Ventures’ managing director, joined Okera’s director board. Funds will be used to accelerate the company’s growth. Okera’s Active Data Access platform manages data across multi-cloud, multi-data and multi-tool environments.

Terminal, which helps to build remote tech teams, said this week it received $10 million in financing, via Series A. Funding will be used for growth across Canada and Latin America. The company’s announcement detailed that funding came from investors ranging from Lightspeed Venture Partners to Thiel Capital to Craft Ventures.

As reported on FinSMEs.com, Terminal helps to identify markets for technical talent around the globe, building out support services that aid other tech outfits. Each terminal location recruits tech talent and manages their workspaces, along with human resources administration.