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Edge computing is a “movement” to bring the power of the computer closer to where data is created or consumed to “rival the experience of the human brain,” explained Packet co-founder Zac Smith.

Equinix has data centers all over the world. With Packet being part of Equinix, it will be able to take its platform and put it all throughout Equinix’s platform. It will also help more companies take advantage of the hybrid cloud, Smith said.

Packet, while headquartered in New York, has a presence in cities such as Dallas and Palo Alto. Packet’s 140 employees will be joining Equinix.

News of the planned deal was announced earlier this year, and was expected to close in the first quarter of 2020. The acquisition closed on March 3, according to Packet.

Packet raised $9.4 million in a Series A round led by in August 2016 and landed $25 million in a Series B round led by in September 2018. , and have also backed the company.

Packet wasn’t looking to be acquired, Smith said, but it already had a relationship with Equinix. The acquisition made sense, he said, as both Equinix and Packet are infrastructure providers.

Packet marks Equinix’s 25th acquisition to date, with the company last buying in December 2017.

Editor’s Note: The acquisition price was revised post-publication from $355 million to $335 million and the number of acquisitions changed from 13 to 25, due to updated information provided by the company.

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Boston-based led the round, which included participation from and . The financing brings NorthOne’s total raised since its 2016 inception to $23.3 million.

NorthOne aims to provide small business owners (such as hairdressers and bakers), freelancers and startups  with an easy-to-use banking application. The company says its offering includes multi-language customer service teams, enhanced deposit and payment features for cash-reliant businesses, and “seamless” overseas vendor payments, among other things. NorthOne recently moved its headquarters from Toronto, Ontario, to New York.

CEO co-founded the startup with his own upbringing in mind.

“I grew up in a family of small business owners where everybody would be going through occasional painful cycles of closing books and chasing invoices,” he told Crunchbase News. “So that in many ways influenced who we are trying to target.”

NorthOne spent a few years building out the product, conducting research with 100 small business owners across America, undergoing compliance testing and “finding the right partners.”

The startup launched its API-enabled, mobile-first banking platform in private beta last June, at which time Bensoussan said, the company already had a waitlist of 100,000 businesses requesting accounts. The startup had accomplished all its “in beta goals” by August, so went public on the app store at that time. In November, it released on Google Play. It currently has the “bare bones” of a desktop product in place. It serves as a SaaS (software as a service) operator, offering monthly subscriptions.

“The role of a bank is not to just keep money safe and move it around occasionally,” Bensoussan said. “We want to go beyond banking and into the back office of companies and take the busy work right off their plates so the owners can have more time to focus on building their business.”

The company’s strategy is to “uniquely” address each community, incorporating new products and services based on the differing needs of businesses depending on their markets.

Specific features include branch-free banking; dedicated sub-accounts for things like rent and payroll; mobile check deposits; integrations with software such as Quickbooks and Expensify; and the ability to give your bookkeeper “read access.”

Growth

Since its launch last August, NorthOne has been growing nearly 130 percent month over month and counts “thousands” of small businesses as customers, according to Bensoussan. The company has grown its staff from about 12 a year ago to nearly 40 today.

“The kind of businesses we’re growing with are the kind I used to know growing up. They’re the core of industry across America, the ones you walk by on the way to work,” he told me. “That really means a lot to me personally.” Many have 20 or fewer employees. Some of the NorthOne’s largest markets are in the South and the Midwest.

NorthOne also aims to visualize cash flow for its customers so they can “prevent oops moments” such as buying a $10,000 oven when the money may not all be there.

“The vast majority of failures are due to cash flow mismanagement and illiteracy,”  Bensoussan said. “That’s the problem we’re attacking by trying to educate in a non-intimidating way and making it super easy to understand the health of a business, and get that information in real time.”

Looking ahead

The company plans to use its new capital to expand its marketing efforts and speed up the growth of its customer acquisition programs. It also wants to hire more product, software engineering and customer service staff.

All of what NorthOne is doing sounded a bit like what an Austin-based SaaS operator, , is working on as well. (I wrote about that company’s raise last year.) ScaleFactor is focused on building a back office for small- and medium-sized businesses.

So I asked NorthOne how similar (or not) they are.

Its answer: “ScaleFactor can be a great solution for bigger companies that have more complicated expense management needs. For most small businesses, the burden doesn’t come from expense management but from the burden of daily banking. So while Scalefactor’s product is awesome, it isn’t set up to replace their bank account.”

That said, NorthOne is apparently compatible with ScaleFactor’s software.

Meanwhile, Battery Ventures’ Shiran Shalev said his firm has been closely following the rise of challenger banks in Europe.

“It’s inevitable that similar disruption would hit the U.S. market next–particularly in business banking,” said Shalev, who is joining NorthOne’s board, in a written statement. “We believe NorthOne is well on its way to building a leading challenger bank for SMBs in the U.S., and are excited to partner with management to realize this vision.”

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The storied 37-year-old venture firm announced this morning it has closed two new funds worth a combined $2 billion.

The fund closures represent a 60 percent increase from the $1.25 billion raised almost exactly two years ago. (Over the past decade, its have been raised every two to three years.)

Specifically, the firm is announcing today it has closed on Battery Ventures XIII, a $1.2 billion investment fund, and Battery Ventures XIII Side Fund, a companion vehicle capitalized at $800 million.

According to Crunchbase, Battery Ventures has been steadily increasing its fund size over time, raising a total of $5.8 billion since 2010. Battery Ventures XII closed in February 2018, while Battery Ventures XII Side Fund  at that time.

I hopped on the phone with , a general partner at Battery Ventures, to find out more details. He emphasized that the side fund is not an opportunity fund. Rather, it invests alongside the main fund in later-stage growth investments and buyouts.

“The side fund is essentially a co-investment vehicle for later-stage deals and larger checks,” Brown told Crunchbase news. “It doesn’t cherrypick investments.”

With 49 investment members (including 10 general partners), Battery Ventures is one of the busiest global venture firms out there today. It says its staff operates as “one global team” out of offices in Boston; San Francisco; Menlo Park; New York; London; and Herzliya, Israel, outside Tel Aviv.

Investing approach

Historically, the company’s primary focus is on investing in B2B software companies. Beyond that, it backs companies in sectors such as enterprise IT (including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity), online marketplaces and industrial technology.

Since its 1983 inception, Battery says as of Sept. 30, 2019, it had invested in 426 companies globally, excluding seed deals, “resulting in 61 total IPOs and 167 M&A events.” The firm declined to provide more specifics outside of directing me to its website. But according to Crunchbase data, one of those recent includes chipmaker for $2 billion in December. Also last year, Phoenix-based health care software startup by , and at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Other previous high-profile exits include online home goods retailer going public in 2014 and being by Japan’s for $1.2 billion in 2018, according to Crunchbase.

The firm’s approach is multistage; backing companies at “all stages of maturity.”

“We invest in companies in the pre-product, pre-revenue stages all the way through to very large companies,” Brown told me.

Battery also prides itself on diversity, Brown said, in terms of geographies in which it invests, stages and sectors. For example, it likes backing companies outside the coasts here in the U.S., and it’s also putting money into European startups. Within software, it backs companies “ranging from applications you and I would use into the infrastructure layer,” Brown added.

“Within that software stack, we like industries such as health care IT and fintech,” he said. “Overall, we think B2B software, where we spend most of our time, has a lot of opportunity ahead of it.”

The details

When it comes to sourcing deals, Battery “does a lot of research internally” and then talks to research analysts and founders, and attends conferences.

“We have created a holistic approach to what’s going on in the market so we can make early bets,” he said. “So while some of our sourcing is data-driven, at the end of the day that usually results in our getting on the phone or on a plane to talk to entrepreneurs about their businesses, and how we can partner and help them grow.”

LPs are a mixed bag of investors, primarily U.S.-based, according to Brown. They include public and private pension funds, university endowments, financial institutions and fund-to-fund investors. Most LPs in the latest fund have invested in multiple prior ones, Brown said, with “some new ones” participating.

Battery also announced that, in conjunction with the new fund, has been promoted to partner. Smotherman first joined Battery in 2013 and focuses on later-stage investments in the industrial technology sector.

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