The goal of edge network computing is to bring computations away from data centers, moving closer to where requests are made, reducing latency as well as improving transfer rates and response times in the process. Despite these obvious benefits, building infrastructure to support edge native computing requires custom builds and becomes expensively quickly. Mycelial is the platform that seamlessly connects applications, irrespective of where they are located – offline, online, edge, and cloud. Developers can easily access and write data across distributed applications without having to worry about setting up convoluted infrastructure and without permissioning issues. As we move towards building omnichannel experiences across a growing number of devices and apps, both internal and external, Mycelial is able to ensure everything is in sync with just a few clicks. The company just recently launched in private beta with plans for a generally available release soon.
AlleyWatch caught up with Mycelial CEO and Cofounder Michael Tanenbaum to learn more about the genesis of the company, how Edge Native frameworks will power the future of innovation, the company’s recent funding round, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Crane led our Series Seed along with several strategic angel investors for a total round size of $3.8M.
Tell us about the product or service that Mycelial offers.
Building resilient applications that need to communicate across unreliable networks, especially at the Edge, is difficult. Mycelial solves that. We are proud to launch the first Edge Native platform. We are extending the ease and power of Cloud Native beyond the datacenter and into the messy, unreliably connected world in which we actually live. We solve the hard distributed systems problems businesses face when they need to efficiently gather insights from data generated in the field and run their software in the real world – at the Edge – where that data has the most urgency and impact.
What inspired the start of Mycelial?
While working with large companies and government agencies on Cloud Native / Kubernetes projects, we observed a near total dearth of options for enterprise-grade, cohesive systems for orchestrating data used by applications outside the datacenter. We founded Mycelial because we identified two key technologies we believe will form the foundation of the next frontier in computing – Edge Native. The emergence of WebAssembly outside the browser for the first time, combined with powerful algorithms for deterministic manipulation of data among many (sometimes offline) peers gave us the confidence to propose our new framework.
How is Mycelial different?
Ease of implementation: Right now, if you want to do anything meaningful on the Edge with either data or code – so if you want to do anything – it requires custom build outs and the never-ending troubleshooting those invoke. Until Mycelial, action or insight at the Edge cost months of diverted engineering talent. Not to mention the tremendous aggregate lifetime cost of ownership all that redundant, non-functional code creates. Our lift? Three clicks. Just drop in our library and get back to work on your business logic.
What market does Mycelial target and how big is it?
We are the first Edge Native platform. The Edge is any computing device that lives outside a datacenter – planes, trains, automobiles, browser tabs, mobile devices, etc. The Cloud may be everywhere, but the Edge is everything around you. The biggest opportunities in application development in the next few years will be outside the datacenter.
Moreover, the edge is generating and aggregating more data than we could ever move to the cloud. IDC pegged IoT devices alone as producing more than 60 billion terabytes in 2020. We will either address that data at the Edge or waste the vast majority of it – we simply don’t have the bandwidth to centralize it all. Edge Native will power this revolution.
What’s your business model?
Mycelial provides a hosted SaaS solution that enables developers to build and deploy on our enterprise-grade infrastructure in minutes. Our customers pay only for the data manipulation and transfer they use. Mycelial’s novel approach to data synchronization at the Edge provides a dramatic reduction in the number of syncs over the wire, lowering our customer’s total costs by up to 95 percent.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
We plan to remain remote first to build the best and most passionate team. Solving the Edge is a big problem and we want to deploy expertise from all around the globe.
What was the funding process like?
It was exhilarating. We got to go out every day and talk to intelligent, inquisitive investors about our vision for the future. Every call was a learning experience, and eventually also a funding one.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Finding the right level of support. There are a lot of firms out there waving a lot of big checks. We wanted a partner. Especially at the Seed stage you are forging a long relationship, and need to make sure your vision is fundamentally aligned.
Finding the right level of support. There are a lot of firms out there waving a lot of big checks. We wanted a partner. Especially at the Seed stage you are forging a long relationship, and need to make sure your vision is fundamentally aligned.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Dependable tech applied in a proven winning format by a team with deep expertise in the latest revolution in distributed systems: Kubernetes. The conviction that an Edge Native platform provides the requisite scaffold for a new generation of innovation, precisely where the future demands.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan to continue our expansion with current customers, as they leverage Mycelial across more teams and applications. Concomitantly, we aim to scale our team – both customer-facing and R&D – to continue solving customer problems at the Edge. In particular, we aim to expand Mycelial’s capabilities with the introduction of a Generally Available On-premise Mycelial solution.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Talk to as many investors and potential customers as you can. Feedback is usually free and sometimes priceless. We would be fascinated to hear about your ideas and projects–join our Discord!
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Immediately solving the data story for our customers, then helping them fully embrace Edge Native as a resource and paradigm. Most firms have a staggering amount of unused compute on their Edge devices that they could be using to improve their latency profiles and dramatically reduce Cloud costs. We fully unlock and connect the infrastructure you already own.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC
The quintessential outdoor New York City dining experience will always be coffee and a bagel in Central Park.
