At first blush, Pantheon does something pretty mundane -- it is in the business of helping companies host their websites.
In a world awash with cheap cloud computing platforms, and a myriad of cheap (and often free) website hosting solutions, you'd have though Pantheon was in a business with few prospects.
But the reality of Pantheon's growth has been impressive. Founded only a few short years ago, the company has parlayed its singular focus (OK, it's actually a dual focus) on hosting WordPress and Drupal websites into an impressive business that powers 150,000 websites globally including some high profile, and high traffic, sites. As an aside, that 150,000 figure is up from 65,000 in 2014.
Pantheon actually has an interesting backstory -- it was built using containers to help scale what it does. And given that the company has existed since before the rise of container awareness, that in itself is an interesting story.
Pantheon has a lot of smarts behind it, helping automate workflow and automation for both its own platform use and the betterment of its customers. Pantheon's platform has a staggering 1.2 million containers in production.
Anyway, the company is today announcing a $29 million Series C funding round from Foundry Group, Scale Venture Partners, and others. The round, which follows a similarly impressive $21.5 million Series B back in 2014, is all the more important given the current downturn in the venture capital scene.
The key to that revenue growth is probably Pantheon's hyper-effective go to market. The company has teamed up with 2,500 agency partners and 50 reseller partners who all help it push its product further, and faster. The company is positive about what the funding means more broadly beyond runway:
"Pantheon is on the leading edge of a revolution in web hosting,” said Pantheon CEO and co-founder Zack Rosen. “The new funding demonstrates confidence in our approach, which takes the heavy lifting out of hosting and development for digital agencies and corporate web developers by providing the development tools and scalable infrastructure they need to build amazing web experiences, launch faster, and maximize their team’s efficiency.”
Alongside the funding, Pantheon has had a couple of high-profile appointments -- Chris Moody, vice president of data strategy at Twitter and former CEO of Gnip, the data company that Twitter acquired, has joined the board. In addition, Niall Hayes, former Zynga, and Electronic Arts executive, has joined as VP of engineering.
Pantheon seems to be doing a great job of executing in a seemingly undifferentiated marketplace -- impressive growth is matched by impressive funding.