Tactile, founded in 2012, aims to make the world a great place to work, by developing tools that empower individuals as well as companies. The Redwood City, CA based firm secured $11.2 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

The growth curve of the industry has been witnessing massive alterations. It has progressed beyond the mainframe or PC eras, to be in the cloud dominated era. Towards the future, the trends are anticipated to be centered around mobiles. Comparing cloud and mobile, web technologies like HTTP were the facilitators for cloud, whereas synchronization technologies would be the enablers for mobiles. Similar to its predecessors, mobility would also require innovative thinking regarding business models and technology. Given the nature of wireless networks and rising demand for accessibility by users, native apps with locally resident data stand out from the rest. Industry players with an understanding on these trends and changes could look forward to bringing in great reforms to the industry, as they would be capable of reimagining every category of enterprise software.

Trends Gaining Thrust

The major trend is on-going consumerization of work. Previously, the tools used at work were chosen by the IT department. And most of those tools focused on facilitating greater efficiency and more visibility into the firm’s functions. Though these are important goals, were far behind in terms of improving day-to-day life. This situation was in for a change with the arrival of iPhone. People discarded their Blackberries and started bringing iPhones to work. Presently, they have gone beyond hardware and started choosing the apps and services to get their work done.

Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Given the low cost of development, and ease of raising seed capital, the present times are highly favorable for starting new ventures. However, when these companies approach the Series A funding, it turns highly difficult. It is observed that less than ten percent of companies that raise seed capital make it through Series B funding. With the favorable circumstances for start-ups prevailing, there is a gold rush of start-ups, which has caused an acute shortage of engineering and design talent in San Francisco Bay area. Therefore, entrepreneurs have to continuously find the best resources.

(As told to Anitha Nair)