Introduction
In a significant development for the incident response software market, Rootly, a startup that aims to automate companies’ responses to incidents like website outages, has announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Renegade Partners with participation from Google Gradient Ventures and XYZ Ventures. This latest investment brings Rootly’s total raised to $15.2 million.
Accelerating Product Roadmap
The new funds will be put towards accelerating the company’s product roadmap, increasing its engineering presence, and investing in its sales and marketing organizations. Co-founder and CEO JJ Tang emphasized the need for automation in incident response, citing the growing complexity of system infrastructure and the challenges posed by remote work.
Challenges in Incident Response
- The rise of remote work has made it rare for incident response teams to be physically together in a war room, making communication more difficult.
- Growing system complexity with the push towards microservices and third-party services makes it impossible for a single engineer to know everything that’s going on.
Founding Story
Tang founded Rootly in 2021 with Quentin Rousseau, whom he met while working on Instacart’s product side for enterprise. Together, they discovered an ‘urgent’ need for a better way to manage incident response. Instacart was losing millions of dollars in orders due to outages, and their customers and retailers were frustrated.
The Need for Automation
The pandemic further highlighted the importance of uptime, as Instacart provided an essential service during that time. Incidents can be expensive indeed, with a report from BigPanda and Enterprise Management Associates estimating the average cost for unplanned outage downtime at around $12,900 per minute.
Rootly’s Solution
Rootly attempts to automate much of incident management and resolution, from coordinating responders to work on an incident in Slack to suggesting possible next steps. The platform automatically generates status updates and even post-mortems, helping users identify related incidents.
What Sets Rootly Apart?
- While there are a lot of companies that sound the alarm, only Rootly automates putting out the fire.
- Most enterprises today have a fire-alarm equivalent for discovering incidents but are DIY for incident resolution – using paper checklists or relying on key staff with deep knowledge.
Market Competition
Rootly isn’t alone in the incident response software market, which was estimated to be worth $29.21 billion in 2022, according to The Business Research Company. The startup competes with FireHydrant and Blameless as well as Incident.io, which last year raised $28.7 million in VC cash.
Customer Base and Growth
However, Tang points to the size of Rootly’s customer base as evidence of its growing success. The company counts Canva, Nvidia, and TripAdvisor among its clientele. Revenue has grown 400% in the past 12 months, and companies are using Rootly to manage over 60,000 incidents collectively each year.
Key Statistics
- Rootly launched during the pandemic and in an uncertain economy, yet it’s still growing quickly.
- In this environment, companies want to do more with less, and Rootly helps with that. We address critical infrastructure – it’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a must have.
Future Plans
Tang expects the startup to have over 50 employees by the end of the year. With its latest funding, Rootly is well-positioned to continue making strides in the incident response software market and helping companies respond more effectively to incidents.
Conclusion
Rootly’s $12 million Series A funding round highlights the growing demand for automation in incident response. With its innovative approach to managing incidents, Rootly is poised to make a significant impact on the industry.
About the Author
JJ Tang is the Co-founder and CEO of Rootly. He has extensive experience in product development and management, with a strong focus on automation and incident response. Under his leadership, Rootly has quickly gained recognition as a leader in the incident response software market.
