Zenhub, a Vancouver-based project management software company, has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Yaletown Partners with participation from BMO Capital Partners and BDC Capital. The funds will be used to expand the use of Zenhub’s project management platform beyond technical teams using GitHub. The company is also launching a new feature called Zenhub Issues, which will allow non-technical users to create issues and track projects within the platform, even without a GitHub account.
Zenhub was established in 2015 as a project management tool that allowed software teams to manage their projects within GitHub. In spite of the fact that GitHub is a natural workspace for developers, it is often considered intimidating by non-technical members and external partners. Organizations face challenges as non-technical stakeholders become more involved in the development process. Additionally, organizations are becoming more security-conscious, resulting in GitHub access being limited.
“Software development is increasingly becoming a team sport,” outlines Tyler Gaffney, Zenhub’s CEO. “Unfortunately, teams typically find themselves working in silos when it comes to the tools they use to plan and track work. The driving force behind our platform vision is to break down these silos and provide a solution that every stakeholder, whether internal or external, can rely on to understand the progress of software projects.”
In order to help software teams become more efficient, Zenhub offers agile project management solutions that streamline processes and improve visibility into projects. With native integration with GitHub, teams can work closer to their codebases. Currently, more than 8,000 software development teams worldwide use the company's platform, which caters to a wide range of clients, from small start-ups to large corporations. Zenhub's platform aims to reduce the need for meetings by automating meetings and saving time.
“Zenhub is evolving their platform at the right time to meet business’ new software development requirements,” comments the principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Paul Nashawaty. “Developers want to spend their time coding rather than in meetings providing updates to non-technical stakeholders. Additionally, most companies may not want to pay extra for GitHub licenses for these stakeholders, not to mention giving access to the GitHub ecosystem. Zenhub Issues aims to provide the ability to unlock more productivity so that development teams are able to do more with the resources they have today.”
