From left: Maeve Kneafsey and Brenda Jordan, co-founders of CloudKPI. Image: Connecticut Innovations
Latest win brings total seed funding at CloudKPI closer to $1m funding goal.
Dublin SaaS player CloudKPI emerged as the sole European winner of the Connecticut Innovations VentureClash competition.
This $500,000 prize fund will be part-matched by other investors, helping the Irish company to close out its $1m seed funding round. The company’s founders, Brenda Jordan and Maeve Kneafsey, hope to complete this round by the end of November with a mix of existing Irish investors and new US investors.
‘The market for CloudKPI’s technology is right here in the United States’
– MATT MCCOOE
“This prize is fantastic validation for our product,” said Kneafsey.
“We were faced with extraordinary competition from clever companies from around 130 countries worldwide. The judges, all well versed in vetting start-ups, were so positive about us that we now want to do them, and ourselves, proud by building a substantial and successful company, with bases in Ireland and Connecticut – an ideal location between our main markets of New York and Silicon Valley.”
Coming to Connecticut
CloudKPI, a previous Siliconrepublic.com Start-up of the Week, is targeting the cloud analytics market, which is currently valued at $7.5bn and is expanding at 20pc per annum.
The company is targeting a growing market opportunity driven by North American companies outsourcing financial planning and analytics functions to specialist CFO firms that use its software to save them many hours of financial modelling work.
“The market for CloudKPI’s technology is right here in the United States,” said Matt McCooe, CEO of Connecticut Innovations.
“In addition to a strong leadership team and technology, the team is extremely committed to Connecticut, with plans to move both founders here. We look forward to working with them as they accelerate the growth of CloudKPI in our state.”
