Dublin start-up Kerno has reimagined the entire cloud troubleshooting experience, empowering engineers to solve problems within minutes.
Cloud engineering problem-solver Kerno has raised €1.69m in a seed round led by Elkstone Ventures.
Kerno was founded in 2022 by Sean Madigan, Karim Traiaia, Anibel Ambertin, Maxi Delo and Vlad Romanov, who all have extensive engineering backgrounds and have faced the very issues Kerno now solves.
“This funding will help us accelerate time to market through increased engineering capacity and kickstart scaling to millions of developers globally”
The round is led by Elkstone Ventures, with participation from MMC Ventures in London and angel investors including Sean Mullaney (CTO at Algolia), and Stephan Schulze (CTO and MD at Project A Ventures).
This financial backing will enable Kerno to double down on its engineering capabilities to further the efficiency and effectiveness of its problem-solving technology. Kerno plans to use the funding to scale across to 100k cloud-native developers and increase their employee headcount from 11 to 20 over the next two years.
Cloud bursting
Despite substantial investments in observability tools, cloud-native developers can spend an astonishing 70% of their time finding and fixing production issues. Kerno reimagines the entire troubleshooting experience by empowering every engineer with the ability to swiftly monitor and troubleshoot applications, quickly and autonomously.
By empowering developers, it will mobilise 90% of the engineering workforce who have the application domain knowledge – reducing the strain on already overstretched operation teams.
“Kerno is on a mission to deliver a true cloud-native experience, characterised by speed and cost-effectiveness, to the world of developer observability,” said Madigan. “With Kerno, development teams can reclaim their time and confidently drive innovation without compromising on speed and quality. This funding will help us accelerate time to market through increased engineering capacity and kickstart scaling to millions of developers globally.”
An entrepreneur with an engineering background, Madigan is the former EMEA Director of Secure Code Warrior, which has raised over $100m from the likes of Paladin Capital Group and Goldman Sachs, where he hired and scaled the team that grew annual recurring revenue from $0 to $15m.
Kerno’s product, which is currently still in testing with early adopters, can be installed with no code instrumentation or sidecar required, which typically bring hefty installation times and performance penalties. Kerno provides simplified, highly curated information on cloud application issues, meaning engineering and ops teams can quickly figure out when a problem occurred, how it impacts the business, what caused it, and who can fix it.
“We were impressed by Kerno’s innovative approach to simplifying troubleshooting in cloud applications,” said Niall McEvoy, venture partner at Elkstone Ventures.
“Their commitment to providing a streamlined, out-of-the-box experience for engineering and ops teams sets them apart in a landscape where complexity and inefficiencies prevail. We believe in Kerno’s potential to reshape how critical issues are addressed.”
