Welcoming tray.io

There are literally thousands upon thousands of SaaS apps today, creating a world where APIs are the new standard of communication among the different services people access. With the proliferation of SaaS applications and APIs comes the need for a new integration platform. Legacy platforms have simply not been architected for this new world, which has created an opportunity for disruption.

True has invested in quite a few SaaS companies, and we continuously hear the same questions: how do you integrate applications and create smart, new workflows and applications that are based on integrations? And how do you do that in an easy, seamless way that doesn’t require extensive IT help?

I’ve actually lived this problem in various companies. I started my career at Crossworlds Software, an application integration software company that was sold to IBM, then at BEA systems, which was also focused on integration software. I’ve been looking for a long time to try to find—based on this new world of SaaS and APIs—a company that has really thought about an end-to-end solution with all the right components and the right combination of enterprise readiness and simplicity. And finally, I met a team that blew me away.

tray.io is a platform for building and discovering software integrations, making it easy to visually build integrations between services using their state-of-the-art workflow editor and supporting framework, Subvert. Their service supports a broad range of integrations, from automating common tasks to syncing data between multiple services. tray’s three Co-Founders, Rich Waldron, Ali Russell and Dom Lewis, are smart, scrappy and thinking about software integration the right way.

Rich and Ali have known each other for 11 years, and Rich and Dom previously ran a web agency together, using the proceeds from the company to start tray.io in 2011. As they grew, the team funded themselves by selling Wellington boots from their space in an old warehouse. When the tray team moved to San Francisco, they had no cash, had to borrow everything to make the flight, and only secured accommodations by withdrawing cash on their credit cards. They eventually moved back to London to build their engineering team and completed an angel round, and later partnered with True in late summer 2014.

We are all thrilled to be partnering with this company and team. Rich, Ali and Dom: Welcome to True!