Cybersecurity practitioners have long adopted a community-driven approach to solving problems, sharing vulnerabilities to enable companies to patch security holes before catastrophic events occur. Now, a new startup, Prequel, is bringing this same collaborative mindset to the realm of software, tackling the pervasive issue of software failure patterns and misconfigurations in Linux workloads.
Founded by Tony Meehan and Lyndon Brown, both veterans of the National Security Agency and cyber operations platform company Endgame, Prequel is building a comprehensive database of software failure patterns, updated by a growing community of engineers and developers who exchange information about reliability. This database is then leveraged by Prequel's software, which integrates into a company's existing software stack to consistently check for bugs and failures.
The inspiration behind Prequel stems from the founders' own experiences in cybersecurity, where they witnessed the power of community-driven knowledge sharing. "We've lived it where I've had to call a former employee in a past life and say, 'Hey, I know you left the company, but no one is really understanding how this particular service works. Can you help us out?'" Brown recalled. "We've had customers tell us stories about driving to people's houses in the middle of the night and knocking on the wrong door to kind of get help." This frustration sparked the idea to create a system for software bugs, mirroring the collaborative approach seen in cybersecurity.
Prequel launched in 2023 and has been operating in stealth mode until now. The company has already deployed its technology in a handful of Fortune 500 companies and built a community network of around 500 people. This milestone marks a significant step forward, as Prequel announces a $3.3 million seed round led by Work-Bench, with participation from Runtime Ventures, Operator Partners, and several angel investors who understand the problem, including Shay Banon, CTO of Elastic, and Jon Oberheide, former founder and CTO of Duo Security.
The seed funding will be allocated toward product development and expanding the detection library. Prequel's approach is distinct from data observability and monitoring products, which also monitor software for potential failures and bugs. Companies like Datadog and Splunk operate in this space, but Brown argues that these platforms are only as effective as the engineering talent behind them. Moreover, they typically only help companies address catastrophic failures after they occur, whereas Prequel's approach enables teams to tackle problems earlier, before they escalate.
Notably, Prequel doesn't charge customers for data transfers, as all data remains with customers – they only charge a subscription for the service itself. The team welcomes competition in this space, believing that more players focused on this issue could ultimately benefit the industry as a whole. "Failure is constant in modern applications, and teams are really only able to get to the failures that are like catastrophic or the failures that are having like customer impact," Brown said. "What we're really excited about is enabling teams to really get a better handle on the mass of problems that exist and being able to make prioritization decisions."
As Prequel emerges from stealth, its innovative approach to software failure patterns is poised to make a significant impact on the industry. With its community-driven database and detection software, Prequel is well-positioned to revolutionize the way companies address software reliability, ultimately reducing the frequency and severity of failures.