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Global software scaleup investor Insight Partners has invested USD$172.5 million (AUD$223.4 million) for a minority stake in Octopus Deploy, a Brisbane-based deployment automation software company.
The investment is the first outside money Octopus Deploy has ever accepted after years of organic growth and profitability during which it rapidly expanded its enterprise footprint.
Founded in 2012, the software company automates and simplifies complex software deployments, and its customers include the likes of Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney, and StackOverflow.
"When I started Octopus, I was obsessed with deployments and making software releases easier for teams. I was a huge believer in the power of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD), but frustrated that so much of CD in the wild ended with code that compiled and passed unit tests, but wasn't deployed anywhere," co-founder and CEO Paul Stovell said.
"Most software teams can set up a CI server rather easily, but many of them struggle to achieve full CD, because deployments were - and still are - the hardest part of software delivery pipelines."
Since its establishment, Octopus Deploy has grown consistently and now employs more than 100 people, with staff primarily based in Australia plus contingents in the US and the UK.
Stovell said Insight Partners made a compelling case and was the right investor for Octopus Deploy.
"In the last couple of years as our product has evolved, enterprises have become our fastest-growing segment," Stovell said.
"On the product side, we found we have a compelling solution for enterprises looking to create consistency in how they deploy software. But as an R&D-centric company, enterprise go-to-market didn't come particularly naturally to us, so traction to date has been organic.
"As we got to know Insight Partners, it was clear that they will be a great help as we grow and scale our sales and enterprise go-to-market."
Insight Partners managing director Michael Triplett said it was incredibly rare to have the opportunity to invest in an entirely bootstrapped best-of-breed software company.
"We routinely talk to our portfolio companies about the products they use or that their customers are using and Octopus Deploy came up over and over," Triplett said.
"The company has flown under the radar, but when you talk to their customers, they are huge fans. It is clear to us that Octopus is the leader in enterprise deployment automation.
"As a firm with deep expertise in best-of-breed enterprise software we are excited to bring the full force of Insight's ScaleUp specialists to help Octopus in this next stage of growth, and we are very pleased to be making this investment."
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