Mobile Coding Start-Up Xamarin Lands $12 Million From Charles River, Ignition and Floodgate
Xamarin, one of many companies working to make it easier for businesses to create mobile apps, is announcing on Tuesday that it has raised $12 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners and Floodgate.
Context & Ripple Effects
Xamarin’s round arrives after Urban Airship’s mobile-app funding round in 2010, another sign that investors are backing different layers of the business mobile-app stack. Urban Airship was positioned around powering apps, while Xamarin is aimed at making them easier for businesses to create.
The $12 million Series A brings Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners and Floodgate behind Xamarin, giving the company institutional backing in a crowded market for enterprise mobile-development tools.
First-order effects
- Xamarin gains $12 million to fund development and go-to-market efforts for its mobile app-creation tools, while Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners and Floodgate gain stakes in the company.
Second-order effects
- Other providers of mobile-development tooling face a better-capitalized Xamarin as businesses weigh competing ways to build and maintain mobile apps.
Third-order effects
- If capital continues to flow across both app creation and app operations, the mobile-app market is likely to reward vendors that own durable parts of the enterprise development stack rather than single-purpose services.
The trend: Enterprise mobile software is attracting investment across the app-development stack, from creating applications to operating them.