Odds are, you’re spending more time working remotely, or collaborating with remote coworkers. It’s also likely part of your last video conference was spent troubleshooting a spotty connection.
But for Chris Pacitti, a managing partner at AVX Partners, the future of video conferencing is coming in loud and clear: More businesses are relying on virtual collaboration — by a growth factor of about 10 — and it matters more than ever that they’re seeing a return on their investment in a good signal.
That is why Pacitti (pictured right) has made a $1 million investment in Vyopta — a startup that reports performance analytics of video conferencing systems for large businesses. The investment, coming through AVX Partners, is part of Vyopta’s series A equity round. The additional investment brings the total funding to $6 million.
Vyopta is using the additional capital to accelerate its product roadmap and make key additions to its executive team.
“Our clients manage massive investment in video technology, but very few tools to help them monitor it and understand if they’re getting real value,” said Ivan Montoya, vice president of marketing and business development.
He explained that while many large enterprises began investing in video conferencing technology more than a decade ago from major players such as Cisco and Polycom, those vendors have little incentive to assist with holistic reporting and troubleshooting when a client’s system blends solutions from competitors.
That’s where Vyopta comes in.
“Our customers have a hornet’s nest of systems they have to track, manage and monitor,” Montoya said. “Our goal is to try to make that a lot simpler, so they see everything in one system.”
To that end, Montoya and Ramirez said their company is focusing on three areas:
- Expanding their staff from 38 to more than 50.
- Finding new office space in Austin to alleviate a company joke about employees feeling like free range chickens in close quarters (“We want to strut around the farm a little bit.”)
- Providing mentorship to current and future employees, both to protect culture through rapid growth and as a competitive advantage in recruiting.
“The leadership team here has seen this movie before,” Montoya said. “We’ve been at startups, and we know how important it is to focus on the culture and build the company as our primary product. That’s something we’re passionate about. We’re a Goldilocks of startups — we have a balanced view.”
Among those new hires is Chad Savoy, who has joined Vyopta as vice president of sales from the same position at the cloud app company Datadog. He has also led North American sales at
Bret Hern has also joined the executive team through a promotion to vice president of customer success after previously serving enterprise clients at Accenture.
At the time of the initial Series A announcement, Vyopta announced AVX Partners would provide executive advisors to support Vyopta with marketing, development and operations from the C-suite of Austin-based SolarWinds. The advisory team included former SolarWinds CEO Mike Bennett, CMO Rita Selvaggi and vice president of technology Josh Stephens.
“Vyopta built a competitive product set without any outside capital —something that takes a lot of discipline and is unique in early-stage tech companies,” Bennett said at the time. ”The video and unified collaboration market is growing significantly and now Vyopta will be well-positioned to be a leader in the industry."
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