Starboard Storage Systems, a data storage hardware startup, has raised $13 million in venture capital from a pair of German investment firms.
The 39-employee company is based in Broomfield.
JP Ventures GmBH, of Öhringen, Germany, joined existing investor Grazia Equity GmbH, of Stuttgart, in the funding round.
Starboard had considered three or four other VC firms interested in investing in it, but chose the relatively new JP Ventures because its approach to investing seemed the best fit, said Victor Walker, Starboard’s CEO.
“They take a long-term view, and they invest to build companies,” he said.
Starboard started in 2010 in New Jersey, backed by Wall Street investors who wanted to create a modern data storage technology company. They attracted local data storage industry veterans Bill Chambers, a co-founder of Lefthand Networks, and Walker, formerly of Storage Technology Corp. and Sun Microsystems.
They moved the company’s headquarters to Broomfield to draw on the many experienced software and data-storage workers in the northwest metro area.
It started selling its data-storage devices to IT systems resellers in February.
“We’ve had great early customer validation and traction,” Walker said. “With the raising of this round, we’ll significantly scale up our sales presence nationwide and beef up our support for those customers.”
Starboard sells exclusively through resellers, and it has 50 signed up so far, he said.
In the next 60 days, Starboard expects to expand from the company’s current sales force of nine to 24 or more around the country. Their job will be to work with valued-added resellers.
