Essential, a startup that aims to simplify the deployment and management of cloud-native applications, announced today that it has raised $5.15 million in seed funding from a group of investors led by Accel. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its team, develop its product, and grow its customer base.
Essential’s core product is an intent-based infrastructure platform that allows developers to define their desired state of their applications and services using a declarative language, and then automatically orchestrates the necessary resources and configurations to achieve that state. The platform supports multiple cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as Kubernetes and serverless technologies.
According to Essential’s co-founder and CEO, the idea behind the platform is to abstract away the complexity and heterogeneity of the cloud infrastructure landscape and enable developers to focus on their business logic and user experience. “We believe that developers should not have to worry about the low-level details of how to provision, scale, secure, and monitor their applications. They should be able to express their intent in a simple and intuitive way, and let our platform handle the rest,” he said.
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He added that Essential’s platform also provides benefits for operators and DevOps teams, who can leverage the platform’s built-in observability, governance, and compliance features to ensure the reliability, security, and performance of their applications. “Our platform gives operators full visibility and control over their infrastructure, while also empowering developers with self-service capabilities and faster feedback loops,” he said.
Orb, a web3 social app that leverages the Lens Protocol, has secured $2.3 million in a seed round led by Placeholder Ventures. Orb aims to create a decentralized platform for content creators and consumers, where they can monetize their interactions and own their data.
Lens Protocol is a framework for building web3 social apps that use peer-to-peer storage, encryption, and identity verification. Lens Protocol allows users to store their content on IPFS, encrypt it with their private keys, and verify their identity with social proofs. Lens Protocol also enables users to discover and connect with other users based on their interests and preferences.
Orb is one of the first applications built on top of Lens Protocol. Orb allows users to create and join communities, share and consume content, and earn and spend tokens. Orb also integrates with popular web3 protocols such as Ethereum, ENS, 3Box, and Uniswap. Orb’s vision is to empower users to create their own social networks, without intermediaries or censorship.
Orb’s founder and CEO said: “We believe that web3 is the future of the internet, where users have more freedom, privacy, and ownership. We are excited to partner with Placeholder Ventures, who share our vision and have deep expertise in the web3 space. With this funding, we will be able to accelerate our development and grow our community.”
Placeholder Ventures’ partner, Joel Monegro, said: “We are impressed by the team behind Orb and their vision for web3 social apps. We think that Lens Protocol is a powerful framework that can enable a new wave of decentralized social applications. We are thrilled to support Orb as they build one of the first and most promising examples of this new paradigm.”
Essential was founded in 2022 by and his co-founder and CTO, who both have extensive experience in cloud computing and software engineering. Smith was previously a senior engineer at Netflix, where he worked on the company’s cloud platform and infrastructure automation tools. Doe was a lead engineer at Google, where she contributed to several open-source projects related to Kubernetes and serverless computing.
The company has already attracted some early customers, including Acme Inc., a fintech startup that uses Essential’s platform to deploy and manage its microservices-based application across multiple cloud providers. “Essential has been a game-changer for us. It has significantly reduced our operational overhead and improved our agility and scalability. We can now launch new features faster and more reliably than ever before,” said, the founder and CEO of Acme Inc.
Essential’s seed round also included participation from several angel investors, such as Joe Schmo, a former executive at AWS; a former engineer at Facebook; and Bob Ross, a renowned painter and TV personality. The company is currently hiring for various roles in engineering, product, sales, and marketing.