Content delivery company Fastly has raised $50 million in financing to expand its footprint as a corporate supplier of speedy application, website, and web service delivery.
In its press release, Fastly calls its service an “edge cloud platform”, which is a fantastic mix of nonsense and meaningless garbage that I’m going to refuse to use (seriously, Bateman Group, that is a hot-trash mix of word salad).
We didn’t get a chance to talk to the company, but according to a press release, the San Francisco-based Fastly has achieved 100 percent annualized revenue growth in the last two quarters (which I know is a meaningless number without the revenue, but beggars can’t be choosers), and has reached an annualized run rate of $100 million in its five years as a company on this earth.
Fastly’s services are used by sites like The [failing] New York Times, Pinterest, Airbnb, Spotify, and Ticketmaster (companies that know a thing or two about the need for speedy service to keep users happy).
This latest round was led by Sorenson Capital and included Sapphire Ventures as the other new investor. Follow on backing came from Iconiq Capital (the family wealth investment vehicle for folks like Mark Zuckerberg), Amplify Partners, August Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures OATV, and IDG Ventures.
The round brings Fastly’s total funding to $180 million. The company raised $75 million in its last round, which was also led by Iconiq.
In the world of enterprise software this investment is a big deal not because it’s the biggest deal, but because everyone. and. their. mother. is. trying. to. do. this.
It’s a safer, faster way to deliver applications and services to consumers who are increasingly turning to virtual or networked applications for more of their needs.
A piece written by the inestimable Ron Miller, got at the heart of what Fastly has done.
Company CEO and founder Artur Bergman says they set out to build a better content delivery network by concentrating on the types of traffic that meet modern content requirements such as API traffic, mobile content and user generated content. What’s more, Bergman says they do it blazingly fast claiming speed of 150MS (which is essentially instant), for example to purge a cache. He claims it can take minutes with competitors (although I was unable to confirm that).
As an example, one of their clients is The Guardian, the UK news company, which often needs to publish breaking news or update existing stories on the fly. This could involve taking down the old story, purging the cache so no trace of the old version exists and putting up the new one as quickly as possible to beat the competition. Bergman says that requires instant processing and he says that’s what his company offers.
Simply put, content delivery networks are networks of servers distributed throughout the world to reduce delivery latency and increase performance. The idea is to deliver the content as close as possible to the device on which it’s being viewed. The closer the content, the lower the latency and the faster it gets delivered.
Beyond its blazing fast speeds, Fastly also offers insights into exactly how it’s working. That visibility for customers is something that Bergman has touted in the past as a key differentiator between Fastly and its competition.