HYCU, Inc. is a pioneering enterprise software company specializing in multi-cloud automated data migration, data backup and recovery as a service, disaster recovery and ransomware protection and recovery. HYCU brings true SaaS-based data backup for on-premises and cloud-native environments, the company provides award-winning solutions for data protection, migration and disaster recovery to more than 3,200 companies worldwide. Based in Boston, Mass., the company employs 300 people across the globe.

This week, HYCU announced the company secured a Series B round of financing for $53M. The round, led by Acrew Capital, was joined by Series A investor Bain Capital Ventures and new strategic investors, Atlassian Ventures and Cisco Investments. VMblog spoke with Founder and CEO Simon Taylor to hear more on the news, why funding now, and what the funds will do to help move the company forward.

VMblog: HYCU only closed a Series A little more than a year ago, why the need for funding and why now?

Simon Taylor: While this is HYCU's second round of financing, we were not actively soliciting funding. We have been fortunate in that our two investors from our Series A that happened a little more than a year ago were interested in re-investing. Theresia Gouw, cofounder, Acrew Capital was impressed with the team, the progress we've made and the customer interest and felt now was the right time to lead a Series B. Once Acrew Capital approached us, things progressed quickly from there. Bain Capital Ventures joined, and conversations we had been having with other strategic partners moved along quickly as well. We are excited that Atlassian Ventures and Cisco Investments joined the round. We are extremely fortunate to have interest from significant IT pioneers and I can't wait to share more as our conversations continue on what is possible together. I think that Aleem Rizvon, Corporate Development and Cisco Investments at Cisco said it well, "Through Cisco Intersight, we are working to transform many of the traditional IT functions into cloud services. That's why we are pleased to invest in HYCU as they bring this approach to the data resiliency space." And, Matt Sonefeldt, Head of Atlassian Ventures, also shared why the interest in joining as in investor, "We're excited to welcome HYCU to the Atlassian Ventures family and believe its approach to data protection as a service creates immense potential for our 200,000+ cloud customers."

VMblog:  What are your plans to use the financing?

Taylor: This round allows us to focus on a number of key areas. You can sum them up into four main categories.

1. Expand our go-to-market and customer success team. With more interest in HYCU's multi-cloud HYCU Protégé platform than ever before, we'll be adding alliances, channel and business development team members to work with existing and new key partners. Also, delighting our customers has always been our passion. It's been at the core of everything we do at HYCU. With an industry-leading 91 NPS score and 135% Net Retention, continuing to delight customers with the right team of individuals is critical.
2. While we are headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, we will continue to build out our hub model with new talent and local investments in Austin, Texas, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Belgrade, Serbia and Cork, Ireland. We have always been a global company and with the way our enterprise customers need to break down silos of data, it will continue to be important to invest in our regional hubs.  
3. Invest in bringing to market additional product coverage across all major clouds, as well as help bring to market a new SaaS-based cloud service much quicker than originally anticipated. That is probably the most exciting aspect of the new funding beyond the support from our existing and new investors. When you think about the number of data sources and explosion of SaaS-based applications in use in the majority of enterprises today - conservatively you are looking at 130+ - the ability to backup, manage, protect and recover that data will become even more critical. Our customers are looking for ways to add simplicity and efficiency without adding unnecessary cost. This new service will be the first developer-led data protection service of its kind, and I can't wait to share more in the months ahead.
4. Continue to invest in our key partner community. Our commitment always has been 100% partner-centric. With interest in our recently released ransomware recovery assessment services and certification program based on the public service initiative we launched last year, R-Score available at GetRScore.Org, our MSP and MSSP partners have a great way to help their customers be best prepared and ready to recover in the inevitable event of a ransomware attack. We have said it before, and it continues to be true, our success is ultimately our partner's success.

VMblog:  Is HYCU stating a valuation at this point in time?  What are the plans for the future?

Taylor: We held an All Hands, All Company meeting to share the great news about the Series B. It was great to see how excited our employees were not just for the continued support of our existing investors Acrew Capital and Bain Capital Ventures, and Theresia Gouw sharing her thoughts on why invest more in HYCU, but in the new partner interest. Universally when you think about the way the market is headed, the importance of breaking down silos and managing, protecting and recovering data across multiple data sources, there is so much to do and so much opportunity in front of HYCU. As with the Series A, we are not providing a valuation at this point in time, but again, this brings the total investment for HYCU to $140M in a little over a year. We had year-on-year bookings growth of 150%, and this news comes on a successful first quarter close. We are projecting to achieve the same growth rate in 2022. And, I will say that we saw a 4x increase in valuation in the last year. We'll continue to keep a close eye on the market and make decisions that align with our customer's journey with HYCU and where we can make the biggest impact with a clear differentiation from the legacy data protection providers, appliance-based and emerging cloud-native solutions companies. 

VMblog: Was it difficult raising funds in the current economic environment?

Taylor:  I think HYCU is one of the good news stories out there. We all read about the current economic climate, turmoil in the public markets, impact of geopolitical affairs, the war in Ukraine and it's no surprise that IPOs at the moment are on the decline and the focus for investors is on real, tangible business metrics like customer adoption and value. HYCU is fortunate that while we didn't need the funding with two new strategic investors and the support of the existing Board members, we are well positioned for growth into the future. And, as I mentioned earlier, this is going to give us an accelerant in some new and exciting areas this year. We will absolutely be sharing more with you and your readers soon on all of this Dave. Thank you for your time and interest as always.

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Simon Taylor is the CEO and founder of HYCU, the world's fastest growing multi-cloud backup and recovery as a service company. Simon has more than 20 years of experience in go-to-market strategy development, product marketing and channel sales management for the tech industry. He holds an MBA from IE Business School in Madrid and has held senior executive positions at Comtrade, Forrester Research, Putnam Investments and Omgeo and is a member of the Young President's Organization (YPO).

Taylor founded HYCU in 2018 as a pioneering enterprise software company specializing in data backup, recovery and monitoring for multi-cloud environments. In the past twelve months, HYCU has raised over a $140M. In March of 2021, HYCU announced an $87.5M A and, in June of 2022, announced a $53M series B. The company has more than 3,100 customers, a Net Retention Rate of 135% and an industry-leading Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 91.