Developer-Centric Innovator Appoints New CEO and Establishes U.S. Operations to Strengthen Global Presence and Accelerate Midmarket Growth
AMSTERDAM and AUSTIN, Texas – AppSignal today announced the close of a $22 million Series A funding round led by Elsewhere Partners to accelerate its global expansion, meeting the increasing need for comprehensive, yet simple and easily scalable, application performance monitoring (APM) solutions for mid-market organizations. AppSignal also announced the appointment of software industry leader Brandon Swalve as Chief Executive Officer and established U.S. operations in Austin, Texas.
“The fragmented APM market is evolving quickly — enterprise observability platforms have become extremely costly and complex for midsize development teams, while lightweight tools lack comprehensive application monitoring coverage. AppSignal fills a significant gap in the midmarket, empowering developers with robust, end-to-end monitoring of their business-critical applications in one simple interface,” said Rod Favaron, Operating Partner at Elsewhere. “We’re excited to support AppSignal’s accelerated expansion and unlock its next chapter of growth.”
Providing powerful, accessible, and proactive APM and logging solutions for a variety of environments, languages, and frameworks, AppSignal helps development teams at over 2,000 organizations across 60+ countries ship code with confidence. Purpose-built for developers of all levels, AppSignal helps developers automate monitoring workflows, identify and avoid performance issues, and enhance end-user experiences.
“AppSignal has become indispensable to our operations at Level. They provide us with comprehensive visibility into our application’s performance and stability, enabling our team to address potential issues before they impact our end users. This proactive approach has dramatically improved our service reliability and customer satisfaction,” noted Jacob Haug, CEO at Level RMM.
Currently, AppSignal supports top programming languages such as Elixir, Java, node.js, Python and Ruby. The company plans to use the financing to rapidly expand into more programming languages and to grow its product development, customer service and operations teams, with a focus on building market traction in the United States while deepening leadership in European markets.
A software industry veteran based in Austin, Texas, Swalve brings 20 years of experience building product-led teams and effective go-to-market strategies to AppSignal. Most recently serving as SVP of go-to-market operations and analytics at Tricentis after co-founding Linq Analytics, Swalve has also held various roles at SolarWinds, W Energy, and McKinsey & Company. He earned an MBA degree in marketing and strategy from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Northwestern University.
“I have been incredibly impressed by the product lineup, customer successes and market traction that AppSignal has been able to cultivate,” said AppSignal CEO Brandon Swalve. “I am looking forward to working with the founders to build on the strong foundation they have established by expanding the AppSignal team, speeding innovation, and scaling our marketing and sales efforts to deliver our developer-centric solutions to a broader audience.”
AppSignal will continue to grow its European-based team while expanding the executive leadership, go-to-market, and customer support teams in North America. Founders Roy Tomeij, Thijs Cadier and Wes Oudshoorn will continue to focus on providing the innovative and effortless APM solutions AppSignal customers expect as Chief Customer Officer, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer respectively.
“Software developers need better APM and logging solutions to manage increasingly complex environments; it was clear we needed to significantly grow our European team and expand into North America to meet the intense demand,” added Tomeij. “The Elsewhere team has a deep understanding of the developer ecosystem, and their support and guidance will help us continue to deliver the exceptional service and support our current customers have come to expect while we scale.”
With the growth financing, Elsewhere Operating Partner Rod Favaron will lead the Board of Directors as Executive Chair, with support from Nick Stoffregen, Partner at Elsewhere Partners. AppSignal will tap Elsewhere’s extensive network to find the seasoned operational leadership and functional support required to scale effectively.
About AppSignal
AppSignal provides developers actionable insights into their applications. Led by a team of seasoned technologists, its all-in-one monitoring product is designed for developers: easy to set up and easy to customize to take teams from scattered to gathered. Dual-headquartered in Amsterdam and Austin, Texas, AppSignal helps mid-market companies around the globe better manage their applications. Learn more at https://www.appsignal.com.
About Elsewhere Partners
Elsewhere Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, invests in growth-ready lower middle market software companies around the globe. Elsewhere’s team of experienced investors and software operators tailor growth plans for each unique portfolio company and offer complementary support across go-to-market, product, talent, finance, and strategy functions. Based in Austin, TX, Elsewhere has invested in 17 companies throughout North America, Europe and Israel since its inception in 2016. To learn more, visit https://elsewhere.partners.
