Contributed by Dawn Capital. See original article posted to 15 January 2015 newsletter.
We are delighted our first announcement for 2015 is our investment in Neo Technology, creator of Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database, participating in their $20 million Series C funding, along with Creandum. Neo4j is an open-source graph database, simplifying the management of interconnected data, offering real time data processing capabilities, scalability and transactional integrity. That is why it is trusted by 50 Fortune companies as well startups. Neo4j customers include: eBay, Walmart, Cisco, Accenture, One Fine Stay and more. Neo4j enables them to take full advantage of the huge amount of complex and connected data that flows through their business systems daily.
Why we invested?
Leveraging open source technology and enterprise software while shaping a new market Neo4j project started in 2000 out of a garage in Malmö, Sweden, and since then Neo4j has managed to build not only a strong community around its open source technology, but also deep relationships with enterprise customers. Neo technology has established its authority and leadership in data management innovation, and has become the most popular solution for a new market it helped shape. Graph Databases have emerged as a core component of various innovative solutions across many sectors, from retail and financial services to Internet of Things, making it today the fastest growing DBMS category. Neo4j has played key role in making Graph Databases mainstream and changing the perception of data management by providing enterprises a trustworthy tool offering high speed and reliable performance for vast amounts of data.
A stellar team of driven innovators
Emil Eifrem, the co-founder and CEO of Neo Technology has taken it upon his shoulders to “save the world one node at a time” in his words. The only other superhero and successful businessman we could think of is Batman, and we would definitely consider investing in Wayne Electronics. Johan Svensson co-founder and CTO of Neo Technology has a laser focus in keeping Neo4j super fast and lean without sacrificing its reliability to the slightest. If there were ever people that could fall head over heels in love with graph databases that’s the Neo4j team, and their love manifests in every way possible from quality of product in every shipping, customer relationships and their writing in O’Reilly book “Graph Databases.” These guys are problem solvers with their feet of the ground and a powerful vision. They could easily chase buzzwords and stick to the the “trendy” social graph, and the various social uses of graph databases, but instead they’ve focused in addressing diverse and valuable real world problems from not “obvious” sectors like telecommunications and healthcare with graph databases.
The vision of a connected future and the fall of the online/offline wall
The impact of data management innovation in enterprise operations we’ve seen so far has only set the groundwork for what is to come in the coming years. It It has been predicted by many that 2015 will be the year of the Internet of Things and it was certainly the protagonist at CES 2014. Morgan Stanley recently predicted there will be 75 billion connected devices in use worldwide by 2020. Wearables, drones, connected cars, smart industry and household devices along with emerging data technologies will transform businesses and our day to day lives. A recent Deloitte research highlights that IoT software and services will be in the spotlight in the next years as it reports that 6 out of every 10 Internet of Things devices in 2015 will be bought by enterprises, enabling services worth $70 billion. If the deployment of graph databases so far enabled businesses to understand the context of their system’s data to solve critical problems and improve their level of service, moving forward the collection of data from even more points in the offline world will enable companies to provide much better tailored services and identify quicker emerging problems and new opportunities. The game is about to change and Neo4j’s true potential is about to unlock. View the original article.  

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