Kong Software ($PRIVATE:KONGHQ) is scaling up, according to its alternative data, and with a new round of funding the San Francisco-based API management software developer is going ape in 2019.
Our first chart tracks Kong's LinkedIn Employee Count - we're able to gauge the number of staffers from how many people identify with an organization's LinkedIn page as current workers - and it has risen nearly 40% in the last few months, to more than 158. That follows an early 2019 $43 million funding round that allowed the startup to start staffing up at a faster pace.
The company - which was initially called Mashape - was founded in Italy, in 2007. But it moved stateside and eventually grew to secure investment capital from investors including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz in 2017, its most recent round of funding until this year's cash haul.
According to Forbes' 'Next Billion-Dollar Startups' piece earlier this year, among Kong's 130 customers are SoulCycle and WeWork. A TechCrunch report that covered its most recent fundraising said it has pulled together about $70 million in invested capital.
The company continues to scale up, judging by its job postings, our next chart. Job postings rose from 33 to 50, or about 50%. And - Thinknum subscribers can view job postings by category - because the top category of job postings shifted from 'engineering' to 'sales' in 2019, it looks like investors' bet earlier this year could already be beginning to pay off.
Finally, Kong's Github Activity - an ongoing measure of developer activity within the platform. Thinknum subscribers can track every Kong Github activity metric clicking here - but one of its biggest sources of activity is signaling growth of about 8% in a little over one quarter's time - and for a company that focuses on supporting the app developer community, the fact that Kong has more than 100 metrics in this category alone to follow, shows that the startup is still pushing scale.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Intel scales back in China as it cuts job postings globally
- Symantec is scaling down - as shown by its alternative data
- Roku investors tune into profit as ratings and engagement soar
