Three high-profile tech investors have provided Tackle.io Inc. with $100 million in funding to support the growth of the startup’s namesake service, which helps software firms sell their products via public cloud platforms’ built-in solution marketplaces.  

Tackle announced the funding today. The startup said Coatue and Andreessen Horowitz led the round, and Bessemer Venture Partners participated as well. Tackle is now valued at $1.25 billion.

The major public clouds have built-in marketplaces through which companies can purchase software from third-party providers. As companies shift more of their information technology spending off premises, it’s becoming increasingly important for software makers to make their products available through public cloud marketplaces. That’s the task Tackle promises to simplify.

Adapting a software product to work with a cloud marketplace often can take months of work. Tackle has developed a platform that it says reduces the process from months to between one and six weeks on average. One customer, the startup says, managed to list its product on a cloud marketplace in just a single day.

Tackle describes its platform as a “zero-engineering” solution. Companies can create a listing for a software product on the major public clouds’ marketplaces through a point-and-click wizard. 

The company provides a tool that makes it relatively simple to embed metering features into a software product. Metering allows software firms to sell their products under a usage-based pricing model similar to the one used by the major public cloud operators. Tackle customers can also use its platform to implement other pricing models, the startup says. 

Software makers have access to a dashboard that helps them track how much revenue they’re generating through the different cloud marketplaces. The dashboard provides more granular information as well. Tackle helps companies track what percentage of users who sign up for a free software trial buy a subscription, detect subscription cancellations and analyze what kind of cloud instances customers are using, among other metrics.

Tackle’s platform supports four marketplaces: AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace, Google Cloud Platform Marketplace and Red Hat Marketplace. The startup says more than 350 companies have signed up for its platform to date. Tackle’s customers include big names from the enterprise software market such as HashiCorp Inc., PagerDuty Inc. and New Relic Inc.

“With most software companies spending 50% of their revenue on acquiring and maintaining customers, there is a huge opportunity to streamline and optimize this experience to deliver more value to buyers and more efficiency for sellers,” Tackle Chief Executive Officer John Jahnke and Chief Technology Officer Dillon Woods wrote in a blog post today.

Twice as many companies use Tackle’s platform today than a year ago, the startup disclosed today. The startup’s headcount has tripled in the same time frame. 

With the new $100 million investment, Tackle plans to continue its momentum by establishing a bigger global presence. The startup intends to accelerate product development initiatives as part of its growth plan. One of the items on Tackle’s agenda is to deliver improved integrations with platforms such as Salesforce that software companies use to support their sales efforts.

Tackle’s goal is to “broaden our platform in support of startups looking to build a Marketplace-native go-to-market as well as enterprises that are retrofitting their product portfolios to align to the cloud buyer,” said Jahnke. “Tackle’s mission is to provide a global enterprise grade platform focused on bringing a Marketplace Cloud GTM to the masses.”

The growing popularity of multicloud operating models in the enterprise could contribute to Tackle’s long-term growth. As more enterprises adopt the multicloud approach, it may become more important for software firms to make their products available through as many cloud platforms’ marketplaces as possible. 

Each additional cloud marketplace that a software firm has to support translates into more work for its engineers. With its platform, Tackle is promising to simplify the task. Reducing the amount of work required to support cloud marketplaces enables software firms to focus more of their efforts on developing new features, which helps them become more competitive.

Image: Tackle