Pusher joins the Balderton portfolio this month. Pusher is a developer tools company that makes realtime APIs to power communication and collaboration apps. This month they announced their $8M Series A, led by Balderton and joined by San Francisco-based Heavybit. 

Pusher is at the forefront of the PaaS revolution — focusing on developers as customers. Over 200,000 developers worldwide, from one-person operations to companies such as the Financial Times (FT), Mailchimp, Intercom and Draft Kings, are using Pusher's APIs today for in-app notifications, activity streams, chat, dashboards, collaboration features and much more.

Max Williams, CEO and Founder of Pusher

The company was founded by Max Williams, who saw early on that providing developers the tools they need to build the realtime experiences that customers are demanding was an urgent and compelling opportunity. It wasn't a simple demand to address either — the maintenance of reliable and scalable real-time infrastructure demanded by high-profile brands was proving the be a fundamental challenge for realtime web experiences.

Read more about the announcement on Techcrunch and in UKTN. The investment is led by James. Read the background behind the investment decision on his Medium.

Revolut raises $250M Series C

Revolut announced their Series C fundraise of $250M, led by Hong-Kong based DST Global.

Balderton first invested in Revolut as part of their seed round just three years ago, in 2015. We then led their Series A and participated in their Series B in the summer of 2017.

With the fundraise pegging Revolut at a $1.7B valuation, the investment marks Revolut as one of the fastest growing 'unicorns' in Europe, and the first British 'challenger bank' to reach that status.

Revolut co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky

Revolut was set up in July 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky, who first moved to London in 2007 to work for Lehman Bros as a derivatives trader and later also worked for Credit Suisse.

This Series C raise comes on the back of tremendous growth at the company. The firm is now processing $1.8B through the platform every month, and is signing up 6,000 – 8,000 new customers a day. Its suite of products has seen significant expansion from its original remit of offering currency transfers, and now includes physical and virtual debit cards, direct debits and partnerships that offer travel insurance, phone insurance, credit, savings and cryptocurrency. Its stated goal is to reach 100M customers within five years.

The team is hiring rapidly. Read more about openings, as well as their new product plans, on their website here.

Read more about the story in Techcrunch, Reuters, Business Insider UK, and Tech.EU.

 
In other portfolio news this month

Wooga talked to Venturebeat about their focus on casual games.

HIYA received AT&T's 2018 Supplier Award for outstanding app.

James Hind of Carwow called on the government to offer clarity on the future of diesel in the FT.

Harry Franks of Zego appeared in The Economist on how the gig economy is requiring unique new insurance services.

Furhat Robotics secured a piece in The Guardian "Ghost in the machine: the robot that can understand emotion."

Luno was named by Tech5 as the UK's fastest growing startup. 

Balderton: in the news

Lars shared his thoughts on Spotify going public in Forbes.

James had another opinion piece in The Telegraph, this time on his thoughts about how trust could be re-built between consumers and tech giants. "What concerns people is not the trade-off between free services and ads, but lack of clarity about what data they are actually trading," said James.

James again provided thoughts on artificial intelligence — 'Creators of artificial intelligence need their own Hippocratic Oath' in the Sunday Telegraph.

Rob spoke at Innovate Finance 2018, sharing his insights on what kinds of funding serve startups best. 

Here are upcoming events where you can catch the Balderton team:

May 2 - Suranga is participating in the Fearless Future course, a programme organised by DiversityVC and Fearless Futures to engage leaders in understanding, and challenge, the root causes of inequality and encourage diversity. 

May 23 - Bernard is participating in Bloomberg Live's Sooner Than You Think event at Station F in Paris.

May 24/26 - Bernard, Rob, Nicolas and Caye will be at Vivatech in Paris. Bernard will also be the guest of Emmanuel Macron at the Tech for Good Summit, which is gathering technology leaders to exchange views and produce recommendations on how technology and AI can be a positive and inclusive force for society.

May 24 - Rob will be a judge on the Techcrunch Startup Battlefield at Vivatech.

June 6/7 - Rob and Suranga will be at NOAH Berlin.

June 14 - Bernard, Suranga and Daniel will be at Founders Forum in London. 

Jul 6 - Colin will be at TC Sessions: Blockchain 2018. 

Balderton's Career Portal

Many of our portfolio companies are expanding rapidly, and are on the hunt for great new talent. Check out the Balderton Portfolio Career Portal — an aggregation of hundreds of open positions at Balderton's portfolio companies. Candidates can apply on the portal, or send us a CV so we can match them with a position.