Instart Logic Gets $17M to Optimize Networks for Content

Cloud-based web publishing service provider Instart Logic emerged from stealth Wednesday, with a $17 million Series B funding round. This brings its total investment to $26 million, which includes earlier investments from Andreesen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

Mountain View-based Instart Logic offers a cloud-based service for web publishers that is a radical departure from traditional CDN and web optimization offerings, that delivers rich, personalized web experiences, even over mobile and WiFi networks.

"Today’s web and mobile users expect near instant delivery of applications, but the explosion of apps combined with the proliferation of mobile devices has resulted in debilitating performance issues that degrade the user experience," said Peter Levine, partner at Andreessen Horowitz. "Enter Instart Logic, which has developed a unique and elegant solution that was built from the ground up to resolve the mobile bottleneck and transform the user experience."

Team Has Experience at Aster Data

The Instart Logic team of Manav Mital, Hariharan Kolam and Raghu Venkat came from the engineering group at Aster Data, which was acquired by Teradata for $263 million in 2011. The company has been in stealth mode for two years, and its staff brings years of experience from Google, Facebook, Amazon, VMware, Citrix, Akamai, Adobe and Mozilla.

"Yesterday’s solutions for speeding up delivery of web and applications are showing their age, as they addressed core network congestion but not the last mile," said Dr. Peter Danzig, who formerly served as a vice president at Akamai and was an early investor in Riverbed. "By approaching this problem thinking mobile first, Instart Logic was able to develop a sophisticated solution."

Instart's technology is designed to solve the last-mile bottleneck of wireless networks. With web sites growing in complexity and morphing into immersive applications, the user experience for applications served over wireless and WiFi deteriorates and result in longer wait times. The Instart Logic service deploys entirely new technology to allow users to start interacting with rich web applications, making them stickier and more profitable for publishers. This reduces the time-to-engagement and improves the user experience significantly.

Instart Logic successfully completed its beta program in December 2012. The company says the majority of beta customers are now using the service in production for mission-critical applications. These paying customers use Instart Logic’s service to drive conversions and increase user engagement across a broad set of industries including retail, travel and hospitality, enterprise SaaS, online gaming, and media sectors.