Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Rally Software's Tim Miller On New Funding
Yesterday, Boulder-based Rally Software announced it had raised another round of funding, worth $16M. We caught up with Tim Miller, CEO of the firm, to hear a little bit about the latest round and what's going on with the company.
Congrats on new funding. Why the new round?
Tim Miller: We weren't actively out looking to raise capital, however what we found at end of last year was there weren't a lot of high quality, late stage, cash flow positive investment opportunities out there. We were in sort of a unique position, and as a result we decided to take advantage of an opening in the capital markets in the private equity world to raise capital. This was sort of icing on the cake of a phenomenal year of growth. We already had aggressive plans for 2010, and this accelerates our plans.
It sounds like you've got quite a bit of hiring planned due to the funding?
Tim Miller: We have about twenty hires in the budget right now, today, which we are actively recruiting for. As we put together new plans, based on the additional capital, we think we'll open an additional 50 reqs here in the next quarter.
What's driving the growth, and why so much hiring?
Tim Miller: We're building out our channel, and hiring at our office in Colorado, where the bulk of our hiring will be, but also in Raleigh-Durham, London, and hiring in the field for our sales force. We're also expanding our product line into new areas, and will be very aggressive in hiring additional engineering talent.
Why -- in less than stellar economy - are you still seeing such an increase in your revenues?
Tim Miller: We're riding a tremendous wave around Agile. It's clearly become the de-facto way to build software, and we're leaders in that space. The good thing about Agile, is that not only is it good for companies when times are good, when there's lot of competition and growth--it's also really important when times are tough, and people need to be more lean and efficient with their engineering dollars. It's really compelling, for both good and bad markets, with the mega-trend of how software is being developed.
Thanks!