In October, 2022 TDV acquired Syncplicity from Axway.
Syncplicity is a file sharing and syncing solution for enterprises. The product is particularly well-suited to organizations in compliance-heavy environments (think: health care, government, finance) where security and access control are essential. The company was founded in 2008, and has had various owners since that time.
In many ways, Syncplicity is a great example of the sorts of businesses we love to acquire at TDV. It was a carve-out from a larger company; it has great tech; an excellent team; and perhaps most importantly for us, it has a unique value proposition which can be leveraged with the right go-to-market strategy.
High level criteria aside, we had very specific reasons for wanting to acquire Syncplicity:
At a macro level, we are bullish on the private cloud market. We define private cloud as self-hosted server environments. Many companies cannot, or will not, store data on AWS, Azure or other commercial cloud platforms for a number of reasons. The main ones are security, compliance, GDPR and perceived/actual business risks. So these companies will therefore host files on their own private clouds. That’s all good and well but most private clouds lack the user applications/tools necessary for employees to do their jobs. That’s where products like SyncplicIty - which functions as a sophisticated file management system - come in.
Syncplicity’s technology is awesome. It is exceptionally secure, highly stable, and easy to use. For customers looking for solutions that don’t require a ton of IT implementation time, and as important, a ton of training for their employees, Syncplicity nails it. More than this - Syncplicity addresses a known need in the market. Every company with sophisticated compliance and security requirements either has, or needs, a product like Syncplicity. As a market leader in the space, the company is well-positioned to meet this demand.
We see opportunities to grow organically by investing in sales and marketing. Many of Syncplicity’s competitors have been absorbed by larger, multi-product organizations. Product suites are really hard to market because they address such a wide variety of customers and use cases. By contrast, Syncplicity is highly focused and specific in terms of what it does and for whom. We see this as an advantage.
The team - both inherited and hired - are outstanding. We are fortunate to have attracted John Eikenberry to lead the Syncplicity team into its next phase of growth. And we are further excited to be partnering with Panayot Vladikov on the engineering side. We are supremely confident that these leaders, supported by their 40+ colleagues, bring the right mix of institutional stability and startup enthusiasm to the project. Just a few months into the journey it has been a pleasure to watch the Syncplicity team reinvent the business once again.