Backing Northflank: Empowering developers and SRE teams with a modern PaaS built for flexibility
In today’s cloud landscape, the need for tools that combine speed with flexibility is critical.
That’s why Vertex Ventures US is thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Northflank, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that’s redefining developer productivity while empowering SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) and Platform Engineering teams with comprehensive control over their cloud infrastructure and networks.
Northflank is not just another PaaS; it’s designed to give developers a frictionless experience while allowing SRE teams to build, configure, and deploy on their own terms. It bridges the gap between rapid development and operational autonomy, a balance no other platform achieves.
We’re excited to finally be able to announce that we led Northflank’s Seed round in 2022, simultaneously with today’s Series A announcement. With this Series A investment, we’re proud to welcome Slater Stitch of Bain Capital Ventures — the lead investor in this round — to the Northflank board. Slater brings industry experience, having been at a prior-generation PaaS startup himself, and a vision that will be invaluable as Northflank continues to scale.
Northflank is proving that with the right design and vision, platforms can empower developers and infrastructure teams alike, enabling organizations to deliver faster, scale confidently, and lead in an increasingly complex cloud environment.
Founders with a vision and a technical edge
Northflank’s success stems from the unique synergy and drive of its founders, Will Stewart (CEO) and Frederik Brix (CTO). Meeting online nearly eight years ago while playing games, Will and Frederik bonded over a shared passion for backend infrastructure and distributed systems. Their early projects included building a hosting platform for gaming servers, which equipped them with technical experience that proved foundational to Northflank’s design.
Remarkably, Northflank represents the first formal job for both founders, yet they’ve already secured large-scale enterprise contracts — despite having no prior enterprise sales experience.
Beyond their technical skills, Will and Frederik have demonstrated a rare ability to communicate Northflank’s value to a broad audience. Will leads the company’s product marketing efforts with input from the team, crafting messaging that resonates with both developers and enterprise clients alike. Their combination of technical prowess and a sharp understanding of market needs has allowed Northflank to gain traction rapidly, proving they’re not only highly capable engineers but also effective storytellers and strategic thinkers.
The modern PaaS challenge: balancing ease with flexibility
Traditionally, PaaS solutions have forced organizations to choose between productivity and flexibility. Developer-focused platforms like Heroku or its modern counterparts enable fast deployment but often don’t work as applications scale and SRE/platform teams want to apply custom configurations, swap out underlying cloud infrastructure or apply infrastructure policy (eg custom security or compliance configs).
As Kubernetes adoption grows, this challenge is amplified. Kubernetes, while powerful, brings complexity, leaving developers entangled in infrastructure intricacies rather than focusing on application code — contradicting cloud computing’s promise of simplicity. For smaller teams, Kubernetes introduces significant management overhead and a steep learning curve, especially for configuring networking, security, and reliability effectively. Northflank addresses this by balancing developer agility with the freedom for SRE teams to configure infrastructure as needed, meeting the needs of both developers and platform engineers.
How Northflank elevates developer productivity
Northflank was designed with a developer-centric approach, offering an intuitive UI, seamless integration, and built-in CI/CD capabilities to reduce operational overhead. Developers can focus on building, testing, and deploying applications faster, with minimal wait for infrastructure provisioning or troubleshooting custom configurations. This allows them to roll out features quickly, experiment more, and optimize workflows in a streamlined, cohesive platform.
The platform’s versatility supports various cloud environments, allowing teams to deploy directly on Northflank’s managed cloud infrastructure or into their own accounts with providers like Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, and Civo. This flexibility enables organizations to retain control over data residency, deployment regions, security, and cloud costs, essential for scaling complex workloads and meeting compliance needs. With real-time observability, auto-scaling, and secure multi-tenant environments, Northflank supports efficient collaboration and reduces friction in development cycles.
SRE and platform teams value autonomy over infrastructure, and Northflank delivers by enabling teams to bring their own Cloud or even Kubernetes clusters. This flexibility means that Northflank allows infrastructure teams to maintain control without sacrificing reliability or compliance. By empowering SREs to “own” their infrastructure, Northflank aligns with the broader trend toward composable, interoperable cloud solutions that can be tailored to each organization’s requirements.
Ultimately, we’re thrilled to partner with Northflank, and with Will and Frederik, as they unlock new levels of productivity for developers everywhere. You can find out more about Northflank, including its open job roles, here.
