Don’t Expect Huddle to Outfit New Office with a Modem

I wasn’t expecting a tech entrepreneur responsible for cloud computing collaboration technology to talk fondly about an old-fashioned, dial-up modem and the screeching sound it makes when connecting, but such was the case yesterday when I chatted with Andy McLoughlin.

McLoughlin is co-founder and global VP of biz dev at Huddle, a London-based developer of technology that helps small businesses and large enterprises to allow users to connect and work securely with others in the cloud. The company—which competes against Box.net, Central Desktop and SharePoint, to a degree—announced yesterday that it raised a $10.2 million Series B round. The funding was led by Matrix Partners, with participation from existing investors Eden Ventures and Charles McGregor, Huddle’s chairman and initial seed investor. The company has now raised $15 million in total equity since it was launched in 2007.

McLoughlin has lately been in San Francisco, enjoying what he calls some drizzly weather that reminds him of his London home, as he scouts for office space to expand the company’s U.S. operations. Currently, the company employs more than 40 in London, but only three in the San Francisco. However, he is expecting a big ramp up locally.

Don’t worry, that new office space will be equipped with the latest broadband equipment, but McLoughlin, 30, in true geek fashion, remembers well the first time he bought a modem, about 13 or 14 years ago, and spending a lot of time working on it and checking out how it operated.

“I miss the sound of that modem,” he jokes. “You could start loading a Web page, then go downstairs, make a cup of tea, and come back and the page would be loaded.”