Forbes Profiles Unqork Founder Gary Hoberman and Huge Series C Fundraise

Following our announcement of a $207 million Series C fundraise leading to a $2 billion valuation, Forbes profiled our CEO and founder Gary Hoberman. The piece, by author Martin Giles, told how Hoberman left his job as CIO at MetLife to form Unqork in 2017, but was initially rebuked by VC because he was too old (he was only 45 at the time) and potential investors told him he was underestimating the challenge of selling software to large companies. 

“Fast forward to 2020 and Hoberman has confounded the skeptics by building a software startup that’s just achieved unicorn status: Unqork announced today it has raised a $207 million C round at a valuation of $2 billion,” wrote Giles.

The piece went on to describe that no-code technologies of various types have existed and allowed non-technical people to build area-specific software. The challenge for Unqork was to build a platform that would provide the same ease-of-developmental access, but for secure, scalable, sophisticated, enterprise-ready applications that could be applied anywhere in an organization—and getting CIOs comfortable with them. And so far, Unqork has overcome these challenges.

[Unqork has proven] “a minimum of three times faster and three times less expensive” —James McGlennon, Liberty Mutual’s CIO

Part of Unqork’s success has been in engineering a strong platform and attracting huge names such as Franklin Templeton, Aon, Liberty Mutual. Unqork has proven “a minimum of three times faster and three times less expensive” than using more traditional methods to develop and maintain applications, the piece quotes Liberty Mutual CIO. It’s perhaps little wonder why over the past two weeks, LinkedIn added us to their list of the country’s top startups and Built in NYC named us the best place to work in New York City.

The piece goes on to explain how Unqork will use its new funds to expand even faster. “The company, which recently hired its first CFO, has already more than doubled headcount this year, from 165 people to more than 350 and now intends to step up its hiring of sales staff and software engineers,” Giles wrote. “It also intends to use some of the investors’ cash to expand its relationships with leading services firms such as Deloitte and KPMG, which should help it to uncork even more opportunities.”

Read the whole piece on Forbes’ website.