SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A cross-section of experts who understand the challenges of buying and selling internet infrastructure globally have signed on as investors in the seed round for San Francisco-based Inflect.
The $3 million Series Seed round includes both sides of the industry: internet startup veterans with first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced when searching for and buying internet infrastructure globally, as well as the service providers who struggle to reach buyers directly.
Investors in the round include:
- Jon Buccola Sr. of Greenpoint Technologies
- Travis Cole, former senior manager, Platform Engineering: Infrastructure of Square
- Chris Fanini, CTO and founder of Weebly
- Jordan Lowe, CEO of Server Central and former CEO of nLayer
- Chris Palermo, CEO of Global Communications Network
- Kyle Vogt, CEO and founder of Cruise Automation and founder and former CTO of Twitch
The Inflect Platform launched in June as a preview release. It provides an open, neutral marketplace where buyers and sellers of internet infrastructure—datacenter colocation, network and related services—find accurate information to connect, collaborate and transact, building solutions that power the global data economy. Inflect delivers accurate, validated, vendor-neutral service provider capability and location information. Inflect is free and easy to use and delivers the most accurate data available. Sellers pay Inflect for customer contracts delivered. Think Kayak for internet infrastructure.
Mike Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Inflect:
“We’re
fortunate to have investors who understand both the buy and sell sides
of our industry. They understand how challenging it is to buy
colocation, managed and network services. As industry insiders, they’ve
all wasted time and money due to lack of access to accurate data and the
right service provider contacts needed to source the right solutions.”
Kyle Vogt, CEO and founder, Cruise Automation
"It's
impossible to buy anything in this industry, or even know whether it
exists, without talking to half a dozen salespeople. It's infuriatingly
opaque. But by aggregating data from dozens of sources and making it
extremely easy to search and explore, Inflect has brought a new level of
transparency to the industry and created the obvious home for a
marketplace of buyers and sellers of internet infrastructure."
Momentum Building Since Launch
Since its June launch, Inflect has attracted a landslide of attention from global networking and colocation services providers. It includes verified data from 40+ service providers and more than 4,000 data centers worldwide. This represents more than 80 percent of globally available public infrastructure options, according to company estimates.
Service providers are embracing Inflect because the platform connects them directly with buyers who have done their research and are ready to take the next step, shortening what has been an inefficient and manual sales process. Service providers can update and maintain product and location data, and they are connected with buyers only when those buyers have searched for and identified their preferred solution and are ready to engage.
Who Uses Inflect?
Inflect users typically have workloads that have outgrown public cloud. They use Inflect to find the right services to augment public cloud and build hybrid infrastructure. These services are needed to satisfy, for example, geographic diversity, network performance, compliance and regulatory requirements. Inflect helps companies find and collaborate with the right service providers in a free, open and neutral platform.
Inflect takes the pain, inaccuracy and cycles out of finding the right internet infrastructure services for each user. Before Inflect, the process took weeks to months, requiring manual research and validation often done via consultants or directly with a multitude of sales reps. Inflect provides the accurate colocation and network services data users need to create relevant and complete internet infrastructure solutions.
News Resources
- Inflect Aims to Simplify Buying, Selling in $350 Billion Global Internet Infrastructure Industry
- 30 Service Providers and More Than 2,200 Data Centers Added to Inflect Platform in Two Months Since Launch
- The myths and truths of cloud and colocation
- Screw Easy, the Learning is in the Hard Stuff