Jul
31
2019
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Prodly announces $3.5M seed to automate low-code cloud deployments

Low-code programming is supposed to make things easier on companies, right? Low-code means you can count on trained administrators instead of more expensive software engineers to handle most tasks, but like any issue solved by technology, there are always unintended consequences. While running his former company, Steelbrick, which he sold to Salesforce in 2015 for $360 million, Max Rudman identified a persistent problem with low-code deployments. He decided to fix it with automation and testing, and the idea for his latest venture, Prodly, was born.

The company announced a $3.5 million seed round today, but more important than the money is the customer momentum. In spite of being a very early-stage startup, the company already has 100 customers using the product, a testament to the fact that other people were probably experiencing that same pain point Rudman was feeling, and there is a clear market for his idea.

As Rudman learned with his former company, going live with the data on a platform like Salesforce is just part of the journey. If you are updating configuration and pricing information on a regular basis, that means updating all the tables associated with that information. Sure, it’s been designed to be point and click, but if you have changes across 48 tables, it becomes a very tedious task, indeed.

The idea behind Prodly is to automate much of the configuration, provide a testing environment to be sure all the information is correct and, finally, automate deployment. For now, the company is just concentrating on configuration, but with the funding it plans to expand the product to solve the other problems, as well.

Rudman is careful to point out that his company’s solution is not built strictly for the Salesforce platform. The startup is taking aim at Salesforce admins for its first go-round, but he sees the same problem with other cloud services that make heavy use of trained administrators to make changes.

“The plan is to start with Salesforce, but this problem actually exists on most cloud platforms — ServiceNow, Workday — none of them have the tools we have focused on for admins, and making the admins more productive and building the tooling that they need to efficiently manage a complex application,” Rudman told TechCrunch.

Customers include Nutanix, Johnson & Johnson, Splunk, Tableau and Verizon (which owns this publication). The $3.5 million round was led by Shasta Ventures, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners.

Sep
01
2016
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Salesforce paid $110M for BeyondCore, made $4B+ in acquisitions in 6 months

clouds Salesforce may have missed out on buying LinkedIn, but it has had a whopper of an acquisitions spree so far this year anyway. The enterprise cloud and CRM services company put down over $4 billion to buy eight startups in areas like workplace productivity, machine learning and e-commerce solutions, according to the company’s 10-Q filed with the SEC today. The majority of that $4… Read More

Feb
02
2016
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Marc Benioff Offers Some Insight Into Thinking Behind SteelBrick Purchase

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaking at a presentation today. When Salesforce announced it was buying quote-to-cash vendor SteelBrick for $360 million at the end of last year, it came as a surprise. CEO Marc Benioff offered some insight into why he made the purchase at today’s Salesforce Lightning CRM launch event.
The move has to be seen in the context of comments made at a Dreamforce press event last fall with Keith Block, who was named COO today. Read More

Feb
02
2016
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Salesforce Announces Latest Lightning CRM Release With SteelBrick Integration

Salesforce logo on satellite. This afternoon at a big presentation in San Francisco, Salesforce announced a new version of the Lightning CRM platform that includes built-in Wave analytics, intelligent email from its RelateIQ purchase in July, 2014 and configure-price-quote features from its SteelBrick acquisition at the end of last year. In addition, the company announced a new built-in phone tool which allows sales people… Read More

Jan
19
2016
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Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe Chats Candidly About 2016 Exit

Sales quotation with fountain pen poised above it. In a frank conversation with TechCrunch last week, Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe talked about his company’s exit strategy, which could come to a head in the not-too-distant future. Krappe believes his company is in a good position to IPO or sell — possibly to Salesforce if it’s interested — some time later this year. “We will be IPOing this year. That may be a… Read More

Dec
23
2015
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Salesforce Grabs Quote To Cash Vendor SteelBrick for $360 Million

Business man signing a contract. They say there’s not supposed to be much M&A action the week of Christmas, but Salesforce apparently didn’t get the memo, picking up quote-to-cash vendor SteelBrick today for $360 million. According to the 8-K form Salesforce filed with the SEC, the deal is for $360 million in stock, less the $60 million SteelBrick has in cash, but not including Salesforce’s investment… Read More

Sep
09
2015
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SteelBrick Nabs Missing Billing Piece With Invoice IT Acquisition

Couple signing an order on a tablet as saleswoman looks on. SteelBrick, the company that provides configure, price and quote (CPQ) software built on top of Salesforce.com’s Salesforce 1 platform, announced today that it was buying Invoice IT, an online billing company based in England. The terms were unavailable, but it was heavily weighted toward equity over cash, according SteelBrick CEO Godard Abel. Both parties are betting on a joint company,… Read More

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