Inside Kandji's Journey to Become San Diego's Next Billion-Dollar Tech Startup
CEO and Co-Founder discuss its $100M Raise, Hiring Efforts and Scaling in S.D.
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San Diego-based Kandji, an Apple device management company, is now valued at $850 million after receiving a $100 million additional investment from investors —becoming the region’s most promising tech startups founded in the last decade.
The new capital comes two-plus years later, since it closed a $100 million Series C led by Tiger Global in November 2021. Since then, it has quadrupled its customer base and increased revenues by sixfold as informational technology (IT) teams embrace Apple devices across the workplace.
The Series D round was led by General Catalyst, a San Francisco venture capital firm, which provided $50 million in debt and the remaining $50 million as equity financing.
To date, the company has raised a total of $288 million, in venture-backed funding, increasing its valuation from $800 million to $850 million, becoming one step closer to joining so-classed “unicorn club” which included ClickUp, Flock Freight, and Drata, three of San Diego’s youngest companies valued at more than $1 billion.
Kandji’s executive team said it has worked diligently to become as efficient as possible, which has been instrumental to helping the company be in the position it is in today despite a challenging fundraising environment last year.
In 2022, the company brought in more than $50 million in annual recurring revenues (ARR) and is expected to grow that number “significantly higher” in 2024.
“By carefully managing our resources and focusing on high-impact initiatives, we’ve been able to build a financially robust company that delivers long-term value to our investors and all of our stakeholders,” Kandji’s Chief Executive Adam Pettit wrote over email.
“Additionally, over the years our vision has remained the same: bring thoughtful automation, unparalleled customer support, and superior experience to admins and end users,” said Pettit. “By keeping our customers at the forefront of what we do, we’ve been able to create products that drive value for them. This steady focus and commitment to our customers is what has allowed us to remain competitive and resilient during turbulent times.”
Founding Story
Adam Pettit who grew up in San Francisco, co-founded Kandji in 2018, alongside his brother Wesley Pettit (Founder and Chief Product Officer), and Mark Daughters (SVP of Workplace).
Before the founding team started Kandji, the trio operated an IT-based consultancy firm focused on helping customers deploy Apple in the enterprise. Prior to Kandji, Pettit was the co-founder of Interlaced, an Apple-focused managed services provider which was acquired in 2018.
Kandji, the 6-year-old company, currently maintains an office and presence in Downtown San Diego.
At that time, the company had roughly 40 employees and had closed a $21 million Series A round. Once year later, it closed a $100 million Series B, tripled its headcount and opened a London office.
Today, the fast-growing technology startup boasts more than 250 employees, most who work out of its San Diego, San Francisco and London office locations.
“For almost a decade before we founded Kandji, we consulted with customers to manage Apple devices using just about every MDM solution on the market,” said Pettit in an interview.
“That’s when we uncovered large gaps in the device management space. Existing solutions were either too limited or overly complex, and none of them could accommodate scaling businesses and mounting regulatory demands,” said Pettit. “It became clear to us that there was a growing need for a powerful yet streamlined platform.”
Raising from Top Silicon Valley Investors
Mr. Pettit, has built a strong reputation among venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley.
In the ealry days, he spent a lot of time looking for investors who understood the significance of a modern Apple enterprise management solution.
More notably he was able to convince prominent VC firms including Greycroft, B Capital, Okta Ventures, Tiger Global, and now General Catalyst to invest in which is now on track to become a global billion-dollar company.
Teddy Citrin, former investor at Greycroft, said his firm was impressed by the positive feedback it heard from Kandji’s customers which included Crunchbase, Turo, Amplitude. “They are changing the landscape and redefining what it means to manage and secure Apple devices in the enterprise,” he said in an SDBJ interview.
Deep Nishar, managing director at General Catalyst joined Kandji’s board of directors as part of the new financing round. In a recent blog post, General Catalyst’s investment team noted Kandji is the emerging leader in a space that is seeing “growing adoption of Apple products” in the enterprise ecosystem.
“Adam and team’s mindset to building an enduring business spans beyond just the product and company they have built,” said Nishar.
“They have been deeply thoughtful in constructing a capital stack that aligns their different sources of capital with their uses of capital. The capital gives the business a flexible balance sheet to build with a long term orientation. It is rare that we come across such a capital allocation mindset in a founder.”
Hiring in San Diego, and Beyond
In the last two years, the company has introduced several major product innovations including Prism, Home Screen Layout, and Assignment Maps.
In was also mentioned on Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startup List, which featured the company after it reported surpasssing $19 million in ARR back in 2022.
To date, Kandji’s biggest customers include Allbirds, Canva, and Notion, and the company has partnerships with such industry giants ServiceNow, AWS, and Okta.
It did not disclose if an IPO was on the table in the near future, and plans to use the new funding to expand into additional markets.
The company is hiring in positions including engineering, finance and accounting, marketing as well as sales. You can find open roles listed on its careers page.
“"We are committed to growth and are investing in key initiatives that will have a strong return on investment (ROI) for the company,” said Pettit.
“Our focus is on building an even more robust and diversified business that can continue to grow sustainably. This recent funding allows us to make thoughtful and strategic growth bets to further power our growth and expansion.”
This new funding follows continued company momentum for Kandji. Since 2021, the company has seen a 600% increase in annual recurring revenue, and its customer base has grown nearly fourfold across more than 40 industries.