Startups

CloudMine just raised a $5M Series A from Philly-area investors

Safeguard Scientifics led the round and now owns a 29 percent stake in the enterprise mobile platform.

Cloudmine staff working in the company's former offices at Callowhill coworking space Venturef0rth. (Photo by Juliana Reyes)

After a long silence, CloudMine is back.
The enterprise mobile platform just closed a $5 million Series A led by Safeguard Scientifics. The round is exclusively made up of local investors, including MentorTech VenturesDreamIt VenturesDeSimone Group InvestmentsBen Franklin Technology PartnersMid-Atlantic Angel GroupRobin Hood Ventures, as well as angel investors who were not named. (Previous investor MissionOG is notably absent from the list, and it’s interesting to note that DreamIt is making a follow-on investment, since the accelerator has said that investing in its portfolio companies was a priority and has been raising a fund to focus specifically on that.)

This keeps the company here and keeps the value here.

It’s CloudMine’s first round of institutional funding. The Series A was a round of equity financing.
The money will be used for building out the sales and engineering teams and for product development, said CEO Brendan McCorkle, adding that the company has had its head down for some time now, working to nab some major customers.
With this raise, CloudMine is doubling down on the enterprise market with an eye toward security, where it has seen early success, McCorkle said. That means clients from the pharmaceutical, healthcare and retail industries. The company aims to position itself as “the industry’s most secure cloud mobile platform,” according to a press release.
It was the right time to raise funds, McCorkle said, because he felt the company was “well positioned to start making some noise” and needed to hire the talent to do that, and quickly.
The company has already started on its hiring plans, bringing on four staffers post-raise, with plans to hire four more by the beginning of the summer. That would bring the company’s team to 20 staffers, up from 12 pre-raise.
Safeguard Scientifics invested $2.85 million in the round and now has a 29 percent stake in the company, said Safeguard spokeswoman Heather Hunter. That ownership stake refers to Safeguard’s primary ownership, meaning that it includes things like stocks and bonds and isn’t a perfect number to calculate a company valuation. (The better number to calculate a company valuation would be fully diluted ownership. Safeguard declined to disclose this number.) Two of Safeguard’s investors are also joining CloudMine’s board: Philip Moyer, managing director of technology, and David Luk, principal.
Though McCorkle wasn’t prioritizing finding local money, he said he’s “thrilled” he was able to.
“This keeps the company here and keeps the value here,” he said, adding that these types of deals are crucial to “creating the next generation of angel investors and cofounders” and showing other companies that it’s possible to raise venture capital in Philadelphia.
The company had raised a total of $7.2 million in equity financing to date, McCorkle confirmed, as well as $100,000 in debt financing from Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners.
The company also recently moved to a new office on the sixth floor of 1217 Sansom St. The bulk of the team is based there, though cofounder and CTO Marc Weil is based in San Francisco and two team members from Boston. Check back for photos of the new space soon.

Update: Clarifying language on the size of Safeguard Scientifics' stake in CloudMine has been added. (3/4/15, 11:10 a.m.)
Companies: CloudMine / DreamIt Ventures / MentorTech Ventures / Mid-Atlantic Angel Group / Robin Hood Ventures / Safeguard Scientifics

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