For most of the past decade, the founders of software startup Convex have been working at Dropbox, where they helped accomplish the mind-boggling feat of migrating billions and billions of gigabytes of user files from the Amazon cloud to an internal system they built. Now they are tired of the limitations of this technology. “We have built some of the largest databases in the world, and even now we are convinced that they are not suitable for most people,” says co-founder and CEO Jamie Turner.
Riding on the wave that pushed Netlify and Vercel to billion-dollar valuations last year, Convex had an idea to simplify in-house web development—often a patchwork of databases and servers—no longer relying on databases. The San Francisco-based startup announced Wednesday that it has raised $25.7 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Netlify and existing investors including Neo and individual investor Elad Gil. The round values the 1.5-year-old startup at $128 million and Andreessen Horowitz partner Martin Casado joins the board.
Web development has become more accessible thanks to the emergence of Netlify and Vercel, which create software that separates front-end programming from server-side programming. This means that developers can now create websites and apps without any special skills. However, behind-the-scenes engineers are required to ensure that a customer-facing product works properly. “You’ll find that in many companies, especially as they get older, 30% to 40% of their workforce can be engineers who aren’t really working on what the customers see,” Turner says.
via forbes.com
