VETRO Raises Over $1 million to Provide Broadband Mapping and Fiber Management Software
This week the York IE Team is excited to highlight another investment we recently made as our Transaction of the Week (TOW). York IE was a part of an investment round in VETRO, Inc., totaling over $1 million. This brings the company’s total funding to over $3 million. VETRO provides broadband mapping and fiber management via its cloud-based software platform, FiberMap. FiberMap enables the assembly, operation, and sharing of the world’s growing internet infrastructure.
Why VETRO?
During the market analysis stage of the York IE team’s due diligence there were two main factors that drove us to believe in the market opportunity for VETRO. First, there are millions of Americans without access to broadband internet, not to mention millions more worldwide. Both public and private initiatives are working to solve this problem and reduce the digital divide. To build new, or expand, broadband networks GIS mapping will need to be used. VETRO’s cloud based solution is well suited for the task as it is easy to implement, highly scalable, affordable, and built with an open architecture allowing customers to leverage other software tools, and data, they already use in tangent with their fiber mapping and management solution. VETRO already has a healthy roster of customers nationally and internationally and we believe they will play a significant role in helping reduce the digital divide.
The opportunity
The second factor, was the large and consistent amount of capital expenditures of Communication Service Providers (CSPs). In 2018, the capital expenditures of U.S. based CSPs totaled $80 billion. With the emergence of new technologies such as 5G, edge computing, and Internet of Things (IoT), this total has the potential to substantially increase. Deloitte Consulting recently reported that the United States will require an estimated $130 billion to $150 billion in fiber investment over the next five to seven years to adequately support broadband competition, rural coverage and wireless deployments for future network technologies such as 5G. The York IE Team believes that VETRO’s software platform is superior to the current tooling used by CSPs and will be useful for the expansion and management of their networks.
Behind VETRO
Beyond a validated market opportunity, VETRO has a great leadership team of industry experts/practitioners, well-thought out GTM strategy, and strong early traction, but you’ll be able to read more on those factors soon, when we publish our official investment rationale.
