Nile secures $11.6M in seed funding to develop a robust data infrastructure for SaaS platforms

SaaS, the driving idea of modern software, calls for a new and innovative data system. Nile, a startup founded by Sriram Subramanian and Gwen Shapira, aims to create this advanced data solution with serverless Postgres at its core.

“While my team built the multi-tenant product for Confluent, it didn’t dawn on me that every SaaS in the world is multi-tenant and needs to handle multi-tenant data. We have to keep building these systems from scratch because there is no existing solution,” said Shapira.

The company has recently announced a successful seed funding round, raising $11.6 million led by Benchmark’s Eric Vishria, the original lead investor of Confluent.

“Virtually every database on the market today was built as a general-purpose tool, resulting in the least common denominator across all use cases,” said Subramanian. “But our experience at Confluent taught us the challenges of leveraging databases for SaaS companies, including authentication and billing. That’s where Nile comes in.

Nile offers a solution to a prevalent problem faced by SaaS companies – multi-tenancy. This is the need to manage data for multiple clients, whether in the B2B or B2C space. Traditionally, companies have struggled with this issue by either overprovisioning servers or creating isolated databases for each client. However, these solutions come at a cost, both financially and in terms of maintenance.

“We have heard multiple incidents from well-known companies where one tenant has impacted another, or upgrades have caused issues. This highlights the need for a better data management system,” says Shapira.

Nile disrupts the norm by making multi-tenancy a core feature of its Postgres solution and separating the data layer from the compute layer. This allows for better isolation and improved performance. Developers simply need to define the database they wish to connect Nile to, and the system handles the rest – even at the session and connection level.

“We believe Postgres is the future of the market. It’s like the Linux of databases – open-source and easily extensible. When we spoke to hundreds of SaaS companies, the resounding answer to how they manage queues, jobs, analytics, and other tasks was – Postgres can do it. Sometimes it’s as good or better than alternatives, and other times not quite as much. But for SaaS companies, 90% of the time, they love doing everything with Postgres,” explained Subramanian.

In addition to simplifying development, Nile aims to reduce costs by centralizing databases and making scaling easier through horizontal sharding. The company also offers features for user management, customer dashboards, AI use cases, and more. They currently have a limited free plan, with paid plans in the works.