Electric, a platform that aims to put IT departments in the cloud, today announced new funding following a continuation of its Series B earlier this year.
Dick Costolo and Adam Bain (01 Advisors) and the Slack Fund participated in the $7 million capital infusion.
01 Advisors put up the majority of the financing ($5 million) with the Slack Fund putting up a little under $1 million and other insiders covering the rest, according to Electric founder and CEO Ryan Denehy.
The funding situation with Electric is a bit unique. Electric raised a $25 million Series B round led by GGV in January of 2019. In March of this year, just before the lockdown, the company reopened the Series B at a higher valuation to make room for Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, raising an additional $14.5 million.
Then the coronavirus pandemic rocked the globe. On Monday March 9, the stock market felt it, triggering a temporary halt on trading. The following week was total financial chaos.
That’s when Adam Bain called up Denehy again. They ‘rapped out’ about the potential for Electric during this turbulent time.
“The increase in remote work is going to be dramatic,” said Denehy, relaying his conversation with Bain. “Larger companies are going to get smarter about budgeting and there is a lot of urgency for them to find ways to spend money around back office tasks like IT more efficiently. Electric becomes more appealing because, dollar for dollar, it’s a lot more efficient than building a big IT department.”
The first week of April, Bain called Denehy again, this time saying that 01 Advisors wanted to put in more money into Electric.
Electric is a platform designed to support the existing IT department of an organization, or in some cases, replace an outsourced IT department. Most of IT’s responsibilities focus on administration, distribution and maintenance of software programs. Electric allows IT to install its software on every corporate machine, giving the department a bird’s-eye view of the organization’s IT situation. It also aims to give IT departments more time to focus on real problem-solving and troubleshooting tasks.
From their own machine, lead IT professionals can grant and revoke permissions, assign roles and ensure all employees’ software is up to date.
Electric is also integrated with the APIs of top software programs, like Dropbox and G-suite, letting IT handle most of their day-to-day tasks through the Electric dashboard. Moreover, Electric is also integrated with Slack, letting folks within the organization flag an issue or ask a question from the platform where they spend the most time.
“The biggest challenge for Electric is keeping up with demand,” said Jason Spinell from the Slack Fund, who also mentioned that he passed on investing in Electric’s seed round and is “excited to sort of rectify [his] mistake.”
Electric also added a new self-service product that can live in the dock, letting employees look at all the software applications provided by the organization from their remote office.
“There are so many stretched IT departments now that have to do a lot more with a lot less,” said Denehy. “There are also companies who were working with an outsourced IT provider and relied on them showing up to the office a few times a week, and all of a sudden that doesn’t work anymore.”
With the current ecosystem, Electric is continuing to spend on marketing but with 180 percent increase in interest from potential clients in the pipeline, according to Denehy.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the accurate amount invested by participants in the round.