Quality Clouds, the developmental governance platform for ServiceNow and Salesforce, has secured £3.5m of investment from funds managed by Leeds-headquartered YFM Equity Partners (YFM), alongside participation by incumbent shareholders and incoming non-executive directors and advisers. Mark Sutherland has joined the board as chair and John McAdam as non-executive director, with Kevin Tumulty and Sander Daniels joining a new Strategic Advisory Board.
Quality Clouds leads the industry in equipping leadership and developer teams with its powerful suite of development and governance tools. Quality Clouds shines a light on all areas of development across multiple platforms quantifying problems and security risk in easy-to-digest metrics.
This investment will strengthen the company’s offering globally and increase Quality Clouds’ ability to unlock the value of their customers’ growing ServiceNow and Salesforce deployments. It follows strong growth in the USA, where 45% of Quality Clouds’ clients are based and where a new team has recently been appointed.
Albert Franquesa, CEO and co-founder says: “YFM’s tech track record was crucial for us. We see them as part of the team and welcome their strategic input. This investment, coupled with our new corporate structure, will turbo-charge the company in the coming months. Our clients will also get a boost from our ability to enable development speed, quality and security on ServiceNow and Salesforce platforms.”
YFM, which is headquartered in Leeds, has a growing software portfolio, including data transformation software company Matillion, innovation intelligence provider Vypr and text analytics platform Relative Insight.
Adam Hart, investment director at YFM, says: “As cloud applications continue to push low-code/no-code development, the requirement for a control and governance tool is increasing exponentially. Quality Clouds addresses this need, and this investment will allow the team to capitalise on the huge opportunity ahead.
“We have been really impressed with the team and their deep domain knowledge. The company also has a powerful vision and a clear roadmap to scale that vision internationally and across multi-cloud applications – we’re looking forward to working alongside this exceptional team to help them reach their goals.”
Quality Clouds has also strengthened its team with the appointment of experienced industry professionals. Mark Sutherland joins as the new non-executive chairman; Kevin Tumulty (formerly EMEA VP at ServiceNow); John McAdam (formerly CEO of F5 Networks); and Sander Daniels (formerly head of financial services Industries Northern Europe, Germany and UK at Salesforce) join the new Strategic Advisory Board. K.C. Watson has also joined the Quality Clouds senior leadership team as chief revenue officer, bringing extensive enterprise SaaS go-to-market experience to the company following his nearly two decades tenure as executive and founder in Silicon Valley.
Albert Franquesa continues: “Alongside the financial commitment, we’re proud to announce the reputational and financial investment from our new chair and Strategic Advisory Board members are making in the business. Our clients will benefit from the wealth of knowledge this Strategic Advisory Board will bring to the company.”
The YFM team comprised Adam Hart, Ben Pitt and Jamie Roberts.
Jon Gill and Mike Dyer of Eversheds Sutherland provided legal advice and due diligence; Michael Bird of Bromyard Capital led financial due diligence; and Emilie Leckie and Richard Kershaw of Leckie Kershaw led technical due diligence. Organisational due diligence was handled by Peter Brown of Catalysis Advisory; and VCT advice came from Philip Hare and Alison Caulfield of Philip Hare & Associates.
