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itopia raises $5.9M to meet demands of the workplace new normal

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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With work-from-anywhere policies becoming the new workplace standard around the globe, Miami-based itopia has seen demand for its cloud management solutions soar. In response, the company raised additional funding, launched products and went on a hiring spree in the second half of 2021.

At its core, itopia helps companies set up and manage their distributed workforces in the cloud. CEO and co-founder Jonathan Lieberman said the company grew 300% in 2020 and exceeded that pace in 2021, reeling in larger enterprise customers. “We ended last year on a high note with additional funding to accelerate our growth,” Lieberman said.

itopia recently raised $5.9 million in a funding round led by Tampa-based Topmark Partners and including Florida Funders. That comes on the heels of itopia’s $5.3 million funding round in March, bringing its total funding to $18.4 million.

“Hybrid work is the future, yet the technologies teams use to work, learn, and create from anywhere simply weren’t designed for today’s work from anywhere teams. That’s exactly what itopia solves — its solution was purpose-built for working, learning, and coding from anywhere. We couldn’t envision a better time than now to support itopia as it continues to accelerate its growth in this massive market,” said Brian Model, Managing Partner of Topmark, who joined itopia’s corporate board.

Since the start of the pandemic, itopia’s product team has worked closely with customers across verticals — from remote enterprise workers to software developers to K-12 schools — understanding their unique needs for secure remote access to mission-critical applications.

Large enterprise customers now include DreamView, Cleveland Clinic, Telus International, Virgin Voyages, CoreLogic and a number of school districts, to name a few.  “I think probably the biggest change is that we’re moving up market. Our customers are getting bigger,” Lieberman said.

Last fall, itopia soft-launched a new solution for software development teams called itopia Spaces. Like Google Workspace for software developers, itopia Spaces enables distributed development teams to replicate custom development environments in a secure browser.

itopia’s early customers for Spaces are shipping products faster in the new normal of hybrid work — with quick developer onboarding and multiple development environments accessible in seconds. Spaces is a fully-managed service based on the open-source project Selkies, which was originally built at Google. itopia has seen strong demand for the solution from well-funded startup companies with 20-250 engineers, often with offshore technology teams.

“I always say that the biggest bet we’re making is around software developers because every company today is software company,” Lieberman said. “We give them the tools they need to onboard faster, jump into projects easier and be more secure.”

The itopia team now numbers 72, up from 50 in Q1 of last year: The company hired a team of former Google Cloud Solutions Architects, including Dan Isla, who is now itopia’s VP of Product.

The company is forecasting significant growth in 2022, even as it gets safer to return to offices. That doesn’t surprise Tom Wallace, Managing Partner of Florida Funders.

“Whether remote staffing remains or in-person offices return, productive and secure work requires less complexity and a reduced cost of delivering cloud software, applications and infrastructure. We’re thrilled for this investment in itopia and their mission to revolutionize how teams work, to help them seamlessly manage cloud infrastructure and improve productivity,” Wallace said.

Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email Nancy Dahlberg at [email protected]

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