Celebrating our $75 Million Series C Round
April 2024, by Peter Thompson
5 mins
Today, George and I are thrilled to share that LucidLink has raised $75 million in Series C funding including secondaries, led by Brighton Park Capital and with participation from our other major investors, Headline, Baseline Ventures, and Adobe Ventures. This is an important milestone for us as we double down on making LucidLink the essential Storage Collaboration Platform for hybrid creative teams. It’s also a time to celebrate and reflect on our incredible journey so far.
The early days
It all started seven years ago. Out of the blue, I received a call from a former DataCore colleague, George Dochev – the most brilliant engineer I’d ever met. He had been leading our global engineering team and had faced a productivity killer – collaborating with large sets of files over distance. After researching for months, and with no effective solution, he concluded that this was an unsolved problem. So, he set out to build it himself, left the company, and began coding nights and weekends to create what would become LucidLink filespaces.
When George gave me that first product demo, I was blown away. It should not have been possible. It seemed like magic and that continues to be one of the most common reactions we get when demonstrating LucidLink.
Fast-forward to 2020. We had closed a Seed round, spent thousands of hours coding, and found early clients with a wide variety of needs. We’d validated that collaborating with large files is a universal challenge. But as a startup, we were looking for our initial market entry point and product market fit, and finding opportunity everywhere didn’t help to focus on that one, specific use case. The COVID pandemic soon changed that.
We were approached by a large broadcasting company that had to send 80 video editors home with only their laptops and no way of working remotely. Then a second, and a third. LucidLink quickly proved itself in a POC and became their mission-critical, production storage collaboration platform. In the next months the calls from other big names in Media & Entertainment, corporate marketing teams, architecture firms, gaming companies and many others in the creative industries kept coming.
LucidLink growth by the numbers
Finding our product market fit when remote work became the new normal was just the beginning of two momentous years for LucidLink:
New customers 🤝
We welcomed new customers like Adobe, A&E Networks, Buzzfeed, and Spotify, as well as Hollywood studios, major broadcasters, and independent production companies.
Rocketship growth 🚀
Despite a challenging market environment, we grew our annual recurring revenue (ARR) by nearly 5x and the number of users on our platform by over 4x.
Scaled capacity, countries and industries 🌎
We now also support more than one billion customer files in over 40 countries for teams in creative industries like media, entertainment, advertising, gaming, architecture, and design.
Industry recognition 🏆
Our technology and culture have also received numerous accolades, including National Association of Broadcasters Product of the Year in 2022 and 2023 and INC Magazines’ Best US Workplaces in 2023.
Expanded our dream team 🧑🏽🤝🧑🏻
What makes George and I particularly proud is that our team has grown to over 120 people, while still maintaining a strong culture of integrity, transparency, and excellence. This has been instrumental to LucidLink’s success so far and will be key for our next phase of growth.
Heartfelt thanks to our believers
George and I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our early adopters. Since we started LucidLink we have heard more than a few ‘No’s,’ but you all made a big bet on us. We are committed to continuing to earn our customers’, investors’, and advisors’ trust, as well as innovating and building the best possible experience for our users.
What’s next for LucidLink
Secure, real-time collaboration over large files continues to be an unsolved problem for tens of thousands of organizations adopting remote and hybrid workflows. Today’s Series C round signals our exceptional performance when it comes to unlocking new possibilities for our customers’ collaborative work.
With the new capital, we are excited to continue our mission to make data universally secure and accessible. This will involve hiring extraordinary people, doubling down on our technology leadership, and bringing our storage collaboration platform to more teams across the globe.
LucidLink’s customers are unlocking 5x in productivity gains on previously impossible workflows. Bringing value to millions of new users inspires us to keep innovating.
And George can best explain how:
“LucidLink has been pushing technology boundaries from its inception and our ultimate goal is to provide a magical experience for our customers. We are incredibly proud of what we’ve built so far, but what’s even more exciting is our product roadmap. We are working on our most ambitious product updates which will expand LucidLink’s capabilities, create more personalized product experiences, and open up new customer use cases. More magic is yet to come.”
If you’ve been struggling with your current way of collaborating, there’s never a better time to try LucidLink. See our product in action in a free trial or get in touch with us – we’d love to show you what storage collaboration can do for your team.
As we step into this exciting new chapter, we’re also on the lookout for intelligent, driven, and enthusiastic individuals to join our tight-knit team. If you want to be part of building a stellar product, redefining collaboration for remote and hybrid teams, check out the career opportunities at LucidLink.
On behalf of George and myself and the entire LucidLink family, thank you for supporting and believing in our vision. We take your vote of confidence with a tremendous sense of responsibility. We can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next!
Peter and George
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