Layer has moved a step ahead in developing its messaging platform which gives a Facebook Messenger like feel to brands and developers. The company has reported obtaining a funding of $15 million in Series B investment round led by Greycroft Partners. Other participants included Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, CME Group, and existing investors SV Angel, AME Cloud Ventures, Promus Ventures, CrunchFund, Fuel Capital and more.
The capital raised will be utilized in developing Layer’s so called customized interactive “stateful” messages. Layer has also confirmed the acquisition of assets from Cola. The acquisition encompasses Cola’s main intellectual properties along with its its patents, the back-end, and the technology stack it produced. Two of Cola’s engineers will now be a part of Layer, including chief technology officer Jeremy Wyld, who was one of the original members of Apple’s iPhone engineering team.
Layer’s chief executive Ron Palmeri, called the round as “substantially over-subscribed” and said that it came from the companies which related to company’s goal. While Layer is non-profitable now, it aims to decrease its burn rate and turn into an earning organization with positive cash-flow for the year.
Palmeri says:
We’re very hopeful that when it comes time to raise again, it will [be to] fund the next wave of growth, not that we need to raise money.
Some of these investments are however, very calculated, and will serve to provide Layer with an opportunity of enhancing its infrastructure and capabilities for targeting some high-end customers. Layer also has a prior experience of working Microsoft, when the two companies joined hands during this year’s World Economic Forum to provide translation services in an accessible way. The partnership may provide Layer an access to Microsoft’s artificial intelligence and machine learning laboratories.
And Salesforce and the CME Group may widen Layer’s reach in the areas of sales and finance. Though Palmeri declined to reveal the company’s value, it has managed to raise $23 million in venture capital till date.
Cola is actually built on Layer’s messaging platform, and is therefore no alien to the company.
Cola CEO David Temkin said:
There’s a ton of synergy between the missions of Layer and Cola. This is a perfect place for us to join forces with a company that very much shares and understands our vision. Cola technology will be available to Layer’s entire developer ecosystem, incorporating our platform into the hundreds of apps that Layer developers are building.
With this new acquisition, Layer is extending its messaging platform to give brands access to Cola technology — interactive, stateful messages that live inside a conversation. Now, developers using Layer will have a framework to make these events interactive and collaborative.
Layer entered the market in 2013 as a platform which enabled developers to have messaging capabilities into their applications. Messaging actually emerged as a communication tool between friends and family and later emerged to become a preferred tool for interaction during businesses, such as banks or airlines. But as tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook lead the messaging world, Layer thinks that developers should not surrender their creativity to these behemoths.
Palmeri told VentureBeat:
Our mission is to provide businesses with their own branded experiences for mobile properties. It doesn’t have to be native apps and can be channels that matter to them, like email, SMS, and the web. A big part of our mission is to bring the same set of capabilities that the big guys have to an explicit experience our customers are trying to make.
The Cola technology has actually enabled Layer to move ahead towards its goal of “stateful” messages. Meanwhile “Bubbles”, which was an integral part of Cola’s platform, synchronizing conversations and eliminated text-a-thons, will still be a part of the service, promised Palmeri.
Layer declined to reveal the price of the acquisition but said the total value of the acquisition “was higher. It cost Layer far more than $75,000.” Palmeri quoted things like costs, patents, licenses, and other considerations and mentioned that it was a all-cash deal.
