Our Investment in Neurelo: Making Databases Easy Again

Today, Neurelo emerged from stealth to announce the general availability of its cloud data API platform and the $5M seed round that we led. Foundation Capital was the first investor in Neurelo and incubated the company in summer 2022, and I’ve personally been on the board of directors since inception. Neurelo has the opportunity to create a unified API platform for developers programming with data – here’s why we invested and what’s next.

An Abstraction Layer to Program with Data

Between 2020 and 2025 more than 750M new software applications will need to be built to keep up with global software demand – that’s more than all of the applications built in the last 40 years. But we only have 4 million developers to build those applications— and that shortfall will likely only grow. To keep up with new application demand, the infrastructure software world has created abstraction layers. For example, cloud computing has created layers of abstractions for compute, storage and networking, making it easier and faster for developers to build and ship applications.

But every application needs access to an underlying dataset. While we have seen significant innovation in cheaper, higher performance and more specialized databases, programming with data remains a challenge for developers. In a recent survey of 2,000 developers, 73% said that programming with data is the hardest part of building applications.

There are several dependencies between the application and underlying databases that must be managed across the software lifecycle. Most engineering teams deal with this complexity by adding disparate tools specific to a database. Each tool usually manages specific tasks within the application lifecycle so it’s not unusual to find five or more tools for each database. And in today’s world where there is a database for each data use case, most applications require at least two databases. Imagine managing 10 tools and two databases for just one application! The status quo isn’t built for developer productivity.

Neurelo has built a true database abstraction that simplifies all database programming complexities from building to running any workload. The platform instantly generates purpose-built REST and GraphQL APIs for data access, eliminating developer reliance on ORM and server-side frameworks. Additionally, the company has trained its AI models on database-specific syntax and semantics so developers can auto generate database queries by using natural language prompts. These capabilities, combined with deep query observability and a schema-as-code feature, allow developers to manage their database architectures with complete visibility through one comprehensive tool. We believe this platform could save developers significant hours per week while also reducing cost due to tools and infrastructure sprawl.

Bringing the Band Back Together

I’ve known Neurelo co-founders Chirag Shah and Guru Kamat since 2017. We met at a cybersecurity meetup group while they were working on their first startup Zero Systems. They pitched their first startup to me and while we spent a lot of time digging into the idea, we didn’t end up investing due to questions around the market size. Despite choosing not to invest, I knew they were special – they had the right combination of product and engineering DNA and showed that relentless pursuit for excellence we look for amongst the best founders. It wasn’t the right time then, but I knew that I wanted to work with them one day.