Technology

Posted on October 24, 2018 by staff

North West data firm takes on Silicon Valley rivals

Technology

The entrepreneur behind tech data specialist Matillion said the company is competing with its Silicon Valley rivals following after $20m investment.

Matthew Scullion is the chief executive of the Altrincham-headquartered cloud data software firm, whose software is being used by hundreds of clients across the world including GE, Siemens, Accenture, Vistaprint and DocuSign.

The software allows customers to extract, load and transform data into and on cloud-based data warehouses, quickly and at scale.

Matillion closed a $20 million Series B funding round in March 2018, which was led by Silicon Valley investors Sapphire Ventures and Scale Ventures Partners. Existing UK backer YFM Equity Partners also provided follow-on capital.

“We’ve been scaling the business pretty purposefully and we’ve almost doubled the size of our team in the last six months and added a lot of new customers,” Scullion told BusinessCloud.

“Today we have around 450 customers, with some great names on that roster like Home Depot and DocuSign.

“We’ve also doubled the size of our engineering team, allowing us to invest in our product, develop more new functionality quicker and strengthen our position in the market.”

In addition to its Altrincham headquarters, Matillion also operates from offices in New York, Seattle and, most recently, Denver, which has become the company’s largest base in the US.

The firm has recently expanded its senior team with new talent, including VP of alliances Andreas Schurch, who joined Matillion from Amazon. Vicki Marchington from Estee Lauder joined as VP of people and Tom Bressie left Oracle to become VP of marketing.

Scullion praised Matillion’s ability to compete with Silicon Valley rivals and said the company will continue to strengthen its US presence, but insisted that Manchester will remain a crucial hub for the business.

“We employ about 60 people in Altrincham and it’s our largest office,” he said. “We’re definitely a British company, born in Manchester and we will never move away from Manchester.

“Our engineering team is based here and always will be – and we love the fact that we’re contributing to the local economy and to the city’s software ecosystem.

“We’re building what we hope is turning into a genuine company of consequence, competing and winning on the global stage against Silicon Valley competition but doing that as a business founded in Manchester.”

Scullion says Matillion enjoys a supply of high quality engineering talent in the UK but without the “craziness of the San Francisco Bay Area job market where costs are inflated, competition is often high and loyalty is low”.

“It’s a great advantage for us being able to have an engineering team in Manchester with great quality talent but without that competitive, scarce resource that you get in the West Coast of the US,” he said.

Looking ahead, Scullion expects the company to deliver 100 per cent growth to approximately $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of the year – and doubling that figure in 2019.

“Next year is all about growth, doubling revenue again, getting to 1,000 customers and continuing to invest heavily in our product,” he said.

“It’s an exciting category and we’re right at the front of the pack, if not perhaps leading, in terms of this type of technology.

“The biggest threat would be for us to not be bold enough and not grow to be a dominant player.”