2018 in review: a portfolio fit for a new year

2019 is already shaping up to be successful, with recent developments announced such as co-investment in a $3M seed round of conversational analytics platform Dashbot [US] led by Bessemer, €7M investment round in car leasing marketplace Vehiculum [Germany], and €6M round in TV analytics platform Admo.tv [France]. We’re looking forward to making it happen, but let’s take a look back on 2018, to summarize what we have already achieved.

And with a portfolio of almost 50 companies, 2018 was very busy and exciting. Our portfolio companies raised over $250M in external funding and met important milestones, and Runa had a couple of exits!

So here is a quick summary of the top public achievements of Runa’s family in 2018:

1. Smava [Germany], a consumer loan marketplace, announced its $65M round led by Vitruvian, cementing a leading position in Germany. Smava also partnered with mobile.de, the largest German car marketplace, to provide consumer loans for car purchases.
2. Nginx [US], an open source web server, raised a $43 million Series C round led by Goldman Sachs. Now, NGINX is the #1 web server, with 66% market share among the top 10k busiest websites in the world.
3. Zopa [UK], the world’s oldest peer-to-peer lender, received a UK banking license and raised £60m in its largest funding round to date. This opens a new chapter in the company’s history, as Zopa prepares to launch a next generation bank in 2019.
4. Acumatica [US], a cloud ERP solution, raised a $25M round led by Accel-KKR. With the new funding, the company plans to expand its team by 40% and further solidify its position against competitors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sage.
5. MariaDB [Finland], a leading enterprise open source database founded by the MySQL creators, had an outstanding year. It acquired data analytics company, MammothDB, as well as database company, Clustrix. It also raised funding from US cloud leader, ServiceNow.
6. Wallarm [US], an AI-powered web application security platform, raised an $8M round led by Toba Capital, hired an experienced SVP of Sales, and released FAST (Framework for Application Security Testing), which is designed to make security testing accessible to DevOps teams.
7. AppOnboard [US], a platform that enables full-fidelity demos and allows users to trial mobile apps before downloading, introduced a “Try Now” button in Google Play and raised $15M to re-invent the way users discover apps.
8. Mambu [Germany], the leading European SaaS banking engine, welcomed an outstanding new board director, Henning Kagermann, former CEO at SAP, who spent 27 years at SAP and served as its co-CEO for five years. Exciting times ahead!
9. Lendio [US], the largest small business loan marketplace in the US, facilitated $1B in business loans to over 51,000 businesses and was recognized as a “Great Place to Work” for the third consecutive year due its remarkable corporate culture.
10. Final [US], a startup that protects consumers against fraud and theft through its credit card, was acquired by Goldman Sachs. Final was founded in 2014 and raised $4.1M from investors including Runa Capital, KPCB, Kima Ventures, and Y Combinator.
11. Gosu [Lithuania], a developer of AI for esports, secured a $1.9M round led by Runa Capital, and its amazing CEO & Founder Alisa Chumachenko (founder of Game Insight) was recognized among Europe’s TOP 50 Women in Tech by Forbes.

So overall portfolio has matured significantly, and in 2019 we will continue building portfolio of global tech champions and we expect even more great news, so stay tuned!