Cloud backup and disaster recovery (BDR) startup Rewind has raised $65 million in Series B funding, led by Insight Partners. The venture capital arm of Atlassian, a major IT service management (ITSM) software company, also participated in the round. Rewind's valuation was not revealed in the funding announcement.
The Insight Partners investment is particularly interesting. ChannelE2E took a closer look, and quickly remembered that Insight Partners also owns stakes in such backup, data protection, cybersecurity and cloud management companies as CoreView, Kaseya (owner of Unitrends and Spanning), OwnBackup and Veeam.
Read between the lines, and Insight Partners is quietly building a multi-company data protection beachhead that extends from enterprise software to the midmarket and down into the MSP-driven SMB channel. Rewind represents the latest investment to land on that Insight Partners beachhead.
Rewind SaaS Backup: What's Unique?
At first glance, Rewind competes in a very crowded market. Multiple startups and established technology companies develop software to back up SaaS applications. For instance, OwnBackup raised $240 million (at a $3.35 billion valuation) in August 2021, and the company extending into the cybersecurity market.
So how is Rewind different? Most SaaS backup providers focus mainly on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce, among other massive installed bases. In stark contrast, Rewind focuses on SaaS backup market niches (albeit big ones...) that potential rivals largely overlook.
Indeed, Rewind protects customer data stored in such SaaS-based applications as Shopify, Intuit Quickbooks, GitHub and Trello. The company plans to introduce backup support for cloud-based ITSM and help desk platforms as Jira (from Atlassin), Zendesk and Zoho.
Also, Rewind has an emerging partner program. But much of the effort currently focuses on agencies. We'll be watching to see if a VAR, MSP and/or IT consulting partner push emerges.
In the meantime, Rewind's longer-tail approach to SaaS data protection "ensures that over 100,000 businesses around the globe can quickly recover from any data issue – giving them immediate access to comprehensive, usable backups in six essential SaaS applications that would otherwise go unprotected," the company says.
Rewind plans to triple in size by the end of next year, though the company did not reveal specific dollar figures for revenues. The company recently surpassed the 100 employee mark, and hired eBay veteran Jason Karsh as chief marketing officer.
Rewind Funding: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the funding, Rewind CEO and Co-founder Mike Potter said:
“While we’ve continued to double revenue and software subscribers year over year, every day our team talks with seasoned technology professionals who still do not realize they lack full control of their vital business data. We see tremendous opportunities to backup the entire cloud and are working towards that vision. This latest round of funding will allow us to expand our reach, bring additional SaaS backup solutions to the market, and raise awareness for the need to include all cloud and SaaS applications in a business’s backup and recovery strategy.”
Added John True, operating partner at Insight Partners:
“Cloud software dominates the modern business landscape, and the demand for cloud backup and recovery tools will continue to grow as businesses of all sizes, especially small and mid-size organizations, look to ensure business continuity by mitigating the fallout of data disasters and the incessant barrage of data attacks. We see Rewind as a pillar of the cloud backup and recovery space.”
Re-read True's statement. Insight sees Rewind as "a pillar" in the cloud backup market. It's safe to say Insight considers Veeam and OwnBackup as additional pillars in that overall cloud backup investment strategy.
