Today, LucidLink, a company that offers a platform for team collaboration on files without downloading or syncing them, announced that it had raised $75 million in a Series C round with participation from Brighton Park Capital, Headline, Adobe Ventures, and Baseline Ventures. With this tranche, LucidLink has raised $90 million in total, a significant amount considering the company was only established about seven years ago.
Like this writer, you may wonder how a storage startup raised about $100 million and for what purpose. Perhaps the five-fold increase in yearly recurring revenue over the previous two years is related. Regarding the funds’ intended use, CEO and co-founder Peter Thompson of LucidLink informed TechCrunch via email that the company will “accelerate” its efforts in customer acquisition, vertical expansion, and product and engineering development.
Because of our best-in-class KPIs and metrics for software-as-a-service businesses, he said investors came to LucidLink seeking investment rather than the company needing to solicit money. “The notable increase in valuation over our Series B in 2022 is a testament to our strong performance, despite the market conditions, in a sea of flat and down rounds.” (Unfortunately, Thompson declined to reveal the precise valuation.)
In 2016, Thompson co-founded LucidLink with George Dochev, whom he had met while working for Florida-based software-defined storage vendor DataCore Software. Dochev was a vital member of the engineering team at DataCore and frequently faced difficulties accessing files spread across multiple physical locations. He developed a remedy and worked with Thompson to try and market the technology.
“By providing instant access to large files and safe real-time collaboration, LucidLink is designed to help remote and hybrid teams of creative professionals tackle a variety of complex use cases,” Thompson stated. “LucidLink has achieved success in media and entertainment, gaming, architecture, design, advertising, and marketing, and has broad applications across creative industries where collaborating on massive files is an issue.”
With LucidLink, users may utilize files and folders when a teammate saves or updates them in a shared file space. This is possible because the software enables users to stream data straight from the cloud or, more precisely, stream file segments on demand as needed by a program, such as Adobe Premiere or Photoshop. When requested, data is frequently cached locally, and a single source of truth is maintained in the cloud.
LucidLink periodically creates “snapshots” of the filesystem, enabling users to roll back the filesystem or specific files to a prior version. The snapshots result in what Thompson calls “very efficient” space consumption because they just require a copy of the modified data, not the entire set.
Thompson states, “the new hybrid workplace requires solutions designed for today’s reality.” “Every other product on the market uses syncing, replication, and multiple copying to move data around more quickly or proactively. Because they deal with the largest file sizes and have a workforce that is more likely than others to be remote and hybrid, our customers in the creative industries face particularly challenging issues that make cooperation very tough. The intuitive way LucidLink resolves the issue is the cause of our quick expansion.
The federal government of the United States of America and well-known companies like Adobe (and, hence, Adobe Ventures’ investment), A&E Networks, Whirlpool, Shopify, Buzzfeed, and Spotify are among LucidLink’s clients. When asked if he was worried about possible macroeconomic challenges, Thompson responded that LucidLink, a 123-person San Francisco-based company, anticipates turning a profit after receiving the most recent round of funding. I interpret that as a “no.”
