Utrecht-based Red Kubes bags €1.1M to make Kubernetes easier to use; appoints new CEO

Utrecht-based Red Kubes, the creator of Kubernetes production-ready platform Otomi, announced on Monday that it has secured $1.2M (approximately €1.1M) in a Seed extension round of funding from VC firm Capital Mills.

The Dutch company says it will use the funds to accelerate sales and marketing efforts as well as the overall growth of the platform. 

Besides the funding, the company also announced the appointment of Rouven Besters as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). 

Rouven Besters served as director of VMware Tanzu/Pivotal, where he most recently led the Northern Europe GTM team for the modern apps business unit from VMware. 

Before joining Pivotal, Besters supported companies in adopting private cloud technologies with some of the largest companies in the region and has led GTM strategies and teams for startups and high-growth companies.

Red Kubes says it focused on the development of Otomi, a first-of-its-kind platform to deliver automation, integration, and configuration of all the required capabilities to use Kubernetes in production out-of-the-box. 

With Rouven’s appointment, the company says it will further execute the product strategy to move towards an enhanced user experience for developers and platform operators.

“I could not be more excited for what lies ahead within our ecosystem. Companies are recognising the challenges of operationalising Kubernetes. The Red Kubes team has done a stellar job in building a mature product that addresses these challenges,” says Besters.

“For Red Kubes, the opportunity to support customers in accelerating outcomes from Kubernetes only becomes bigger. While almost every company will be going after the opportunities of Kubernetes, they will also be presented with a dilemma, and Red Kubes is ideally positioned to help solve that dilemma,” says Besters.

Red Kubes: Making Kubernetes accessible

Sander Rodenhuis and Maurice Faber founded Red Kubes in 2019 after noticing that organisations are having difficulty keeping up with the increasing complexity of Kubernetes.

To make it easy to get started with Kubernetes, they developed an open-source self-hosted PaaS for Kubernetes. 

After years of development, the company creates Otomi, an integrated platform delivering & automating all the required capabilities for a production Kubernetes setup.

Red Kubes says that its platform integrates the best open-source tools with automation and self-service, enabling users to transform Kubernetes clusters in any cloud environment into a streamlined production container platform. 

As a result, it simplifies the management, configuration, and optimisation of Kubernetes, making its usage much simpler and more accessible. 

The Investor

Based out of Gorinchem, the Netherlands, Capital Mills invests predominantly in SaaS and eCommerce companies. The VC provides Revenue-based Financing and (late) seed venture capital between €500,000 to €1,500,000 

“The market for Kubernetes is progressing quickly, and companies are finding it hard to keep up. It was the initial idea for Otomi and we are very pleased to see that the product has evolved to its comprehensive and mature state with happy users. We are very excited with the appointment of Rouven as the CEO, and combined with the extended seed round, Red Kubes is now ready to accelerate growth and extend its reach,” says Erwin van der Veen, partner at Capital Mills.