By Eric Buatois, BGV General Partner
We’ve all heard of SaaS, IaaS, and DaaS.
Now meet the latest addition to the software as a service nomenclature: FaaS.
That would be features-as-a-service, a dream development for app developers everywhere.
FaaS is a platform of tools and features – login, biometrics, chat, location services, data storage – that developers can integrate as an off-the-shelf solution for new and existing apps. FaaS saves app devs time because they don’t have to build their own features. Down the road, FaaS also saves on debugging and maintenance costs.
With successful investments in the DevOps market, BGV is excited about this space, which is why we were pleased to participate in a $12 million Series A funding round for Onymos, a leading FaaS provider, along with Great Point Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Industry Ventures. The investment will help Onymos enhance its platform, expand its team, and build market leadership.
“Enterprises today are experiencing long development times, the ongoing burden of technical debt, and diminished returns on their investments in innovation,” said Shiva Nathan, founder and CEO of Onymos. “Onymos provides a solution that addresses these common challenges and enables engineering teams to focus on building true business value for their organizations.”
From Months to Days
A typical corporate app takes a team of 10 engineers three to four months to develop. Onymos’ product, which includes 20 foundational features, changes that equation.
With its built-in Features, the Onymos platform enables just two engineers to create an app in a few days or weeks instead of months. That kind of speed fundamentally alters the time to market for engineering and product teams.
FaaS also solves the maintenance problem. App development teams spend about 70 percent of their time updating their applications to respond to software upgrades from Cloud providers, Service providers, and Platform providers like Android and iOS. With the Onymos platform, maintenance is automated.
CEO Shiva Nathan has personal experience in the field. The former head of Platform & services at software giant Intuit, Nathan stumbled on the idea of FaaS when he was looking for a platform to build Intuit’s apps. Finding none, he decided to build his own.
Enterprise 4.0 Mobile Disruption
We see Onymos as part of the Enterprise 4.0 wave of business innovation. For the uninitiated, Enterprise 4.0 refers to the widespread adoption of AI, machine learning, virtual reality, and IoT devices in every business solution. This latest wave of technology-driven innovation will require businesses to prioritize application development.
Onymos is uniquely positioned to benefit from this disruption in the marketplace. The Onymos platform will form part of the critical infrastructure of the quintessential Enterprise 4.0 company, which will allow both startups and legacy brands to drive six-figure engagements with Enterprise clients.
The upcoming recession will demand engineering teams to deliver more functionalities, faster and cheaper. Large corporations will have to double down on improving their customer experience.
Better yet, Onymos is at heart a SaaS enterprise play, which means it can build its total addressable market (TAM) with little or no competition. We estimate Onymos’ potential revenue to be in the billions.
For now, Onymos’ strategy is to target retail pharmacies, which have been forced to re-engineer all of their front-end processes – read mobile apps – due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That includes everything from customer engagement to vaccination appointments to documents and reimbursements.
Looking forward, Onymos will leverage this Series A financing to expand its team while it continues to refine its product offering. We are excited to watch the company grow and be part of an emerging FaaS market that brings end-to-end features to the Enterprise 4.0 business space. The future is bright for Onymos.
Eric Buatois, BGV General Partner
