Fiberplane Raises €7.5M Seed Funding for Incident Response Collaboration

Fiberplane Secures €7.5 Million Seed Funding for Collaborative SRE Notebooks

Fiberplane, a startup headquartered in Amsterdam and focused on early-stage development, has recently announced the completion of a €7.5 million (roughly $8.8 million USD) seed funding round. The company is dedicated to creating collaborative notebooks specifically designed for Site Reliability Engineers (SREs).

Investment Details

This funding round was jointly led by Crane Venture Partners and Notion Capital. Additional participation came from Northzone, System.One, and Basecase Capital, demonstrating strong investor confidence in Fiberplane’s vision.

The Genesis of Fiberplane

Micha Hernandez van Leuffen, known as Mies, serves as the founder and CEO of Fiberplane. His prior venture, Werker, was acquired by Oracle in 2017. Following the acquisition, Hernandez van Leuffen observed firsthand the challenges faced by teams when responding to system outages.

He described the process of troubleshooting as a “treasure hunt,” involving constant switching between metrics, logs, and traces to pinpoint the root cause of downtime. This experience proved pivotal in shaping Fiberplane’s core concept.

Key Insights into Incident Response

Hernandez van Leuffen identified two crucial elements for effective incident response. First, a centralized repository for all incident-related data is essential. Second, real-time collaboration is vital for distributed teams managing complex systems, particularly those operating across multiple time zones.

After departing from Oracle in August 2020, he began conceptualizing a solution that would provide DevOps teams and SREs with collaborative editing capabilities comparable to those offered by tools like Google Docs or Notion.

Fiberplane’s Collaborative Approach

Fiberplane offers a collaborative notebook environment where SREs can integrate diverse data types and work together to resolve incidents. The platform automatically maintains a detailed audit trail of the resolution process. Multiple users can contribute to the notebook simultaneously, mirroring the functionality of shared document editing platforms.

Future Expansion Plans

The company’s ambitions extend beyond its current capabilities. The long-term goal is to develop a comprehensive operational platform for SREs and DevOps teams, encompassing all facets of outage management. Hernandez van Leuffen envisions an “SRE workbench” that will enable teams to not only diagnose issues but also directly control and manage their infrastructure.

Growth and Diversity Initiatives

Fiberplane currently employs 13 individuals and is experiencing growth. The company is actively focused on building a diverse workforce and implementing strategies to attract a wider range of candidates.

“We’re re-examining our hiring processes to promote diversity. This includes advertising positions in communities representing underrepresented groups, utilizing gender decoders to review job descriptions, and extending application windows,” explained Elena Boroda, marketing manager at Fiberplane.

Geographical Distribution

While Hernandez van Leuffen is located in Amsterdam, Fiberplane’s team is geographically dispersed, with members in the U.K., Berlin, Copenhagen, and the U.S. The company intends to establish Amsterdam as its primary hub once offices are fully reopened, given the concentration of employees in that location.