2017-02-02
SEATTLE, WA, Suplari today announced a $3.1 million investment from Madrona Venture Group and Amplify Partners.
Nikesh Parekh, the company's CEO, told GeekWire that Suplari is in stealth mode and wouldn't reveal more details about its technology. The funding will be used to bring Suplari's first product to market.
'We are building an intelligent application focused on a unique data set in the enterprise that largely goes unmanaged today,' he noted.
Parekh, a real estate technology veteran who previously held leadership positions at Market Leader and Trulia, co-founded Suplari with CTO Jeff Gerber and CPO Brian White.
Gerber is a long-time engineering leader who co-founded startups like iConclude (acquired by Opsware and later by HP) and most recently helped lead Apptio's machine learning and intelligent app development before the company went public last year.
Parekh said Gerber originally approached him with the idea for Suplari.
'The 'data liberation' aspect of the business really appealed to me, particularly after seeing how Trulia and Zillow revolutionized real estate search by making data more accessible and approachable,' he noted.
White, meanwhile, worked with Gerber at iConclude as an early employee; he has experience working at places like Amazon Web Services and SkyTap.
There are connections between the three founders and Madrona, one of the region's top VC firms. Gerber previously worked at three separate Madrona-backed companies; White worked for two Madrona-backed companies; Parekh was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the firm nine years ago.
Parekh said Suplari is a 'great example of the importance of taking a long-term view on relationships, particularly in a city like Seattle.'
In a blog post, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain said the firm's investment in Suplari is similar to other 'intelligent app' startups it backs like Turi, Algorithmia, and MightyAI. He said 'intelligent apps' is 'an area we helped define.'
'Intelligent apps combine data and machine learning to provide real-time, actionable insight into business and consumer applications,' McIlwain wrote.
Suplari, which is working out of Madrona's Seattle office, plans to employ 10 people by the end of 2017.
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