It turns out that while we were “dead”, the world kept spinning and things kept happening. Start-ups were being created, deals were being made and funding was allocated. One of the bigger rounds that happened that week was about Neo Technology, who is at the forefront of the noSQL movement which tries to undermine and revolutionise the more traditional database management systems. This might sound techy and complicated, if you do not know exactly what is going on, but the truth of the matter is – this is important and can have a very large impact.
The funding that is going into this Swedish Startup supports this idea. In 2009 they received their first $2.5 million seed funding, followed by a $10.6 million round in 2011 and now they announced that they have raised $11 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Sunstone Capital with Fidelity Growth Partners Europe and Conor Venture Partners on board.
But funding is just a part of the story, perhaps a closer look at what they have achieved will tell us why they are being trusted with all that money. First of all, “Neo Technology is the world leader [in the market for graph databases” according Nikolaj Nyholm of Sunstone Capital and have over 20 clients from the Global 2000. They are also growing at an extraordinary pace with 2012 bookings data being 440% above that of 2011.
The great thing about Neo Technology and Neo4j (Their main product) is that they are very close to their community, offering open source GPL licenses which really helps to boost the company and the overall noSQL movement. For instance thirty-one new Meetup Groups for Neo4j have sprung up over the last year in 27 cities across 15 countries, which is saying a lot. This is an interesting model and definitely something that other start-ups should consider.
