This startup just pocketed $5M to turn your app from a snail to a gazelle

Slow apps: Nobody likes them.

But an Irish startup named Golgi claims it can change that by enabling developers to speed up the load and update times of their apps.

Spinning out of Openmind Networks, Golgi is coming out of stealth with $5 million in tow from its parent company, and its service is now available for both iOS and Android apps.

To illustrate what exactly Golgi does, the team behind it built two versions of a news reader it demoed during a video-chat interview with VentureBeat. One version used Golgi, and the other didn’t. Chief technology officer Brian Kelly loaded and refreshed both apps, showing that while the one without Golgi took several moments to update, the Golgi-enhanced app did so in the matter of a second or two.

Golgi claims it can make apps up to 20 times faster.

To achieve that, the startup’s service uses a combination of tactics. It uses push notifications to wake up the device, checks for connectivity to determine optimal delivery times, and uses a store-and-forward system, meaning that if one endpoint is offline, Golgi will complete the delivery of data as soon as it comes online.

Golgi’s multiple data centers in different parts of the world minimize the distance data travels.

The geographical distribution of Gogi’s data centers can also ensure that if an app’s users are all in one area, it can optimize for a streamlined data delivery to that location, according to Kelly.

“All the developer has to do then, is define the type of data they want to send, then define the sort of transactions, interactions between their app and the server, then we do the heavy lifting,” said Kelly.

Loading speed is important to developers as it can often discourage people from using an app. “If an app doesn’t load in 3 seconds, they think it’s broken,” said Kelly, citing a Compuware report. People giving up using an app because of this can have a range of repercussions for developers as they can lose out on app engagement, in-app purchases, gathering of data about their users, ad revenue, and so on.

The company is pricing its service in tiers. There is a free level of use for developers wishing to experiment or even have a small user base, and from there, it bases prices on active endpoints rather than transactions, as developer services often do.

There are already existing alternatives to Golgi, including a number of content distribution networks (CDNs) offering mobile app products such as CDNify and Instart Logic, the latter focusing on web-based mobile apps.

The company was founded in Ireland, but it will be relocating its headquarters to the San Francisco Bay Area, and most of its new funding will go toward the relocation, Kelly said.