Today is a very special day for Nitro. We’re announcing a $15m investment from Battery Ventures, and the start of Nitro’s “second chapter”. If chapter one was about first generation document sharing, chapter two expands to include second generation document sharing. And we’re excited to have the team from Battery joining us for the next part of the Nitro story.

This spring week, we flung our Melbourne doors wide open to a bank security expert, a seasoned IT journalist, a pair of young men selling award-winning baby prams online, and handfuls of inspiration-finders, idea-seekers and curious-lookers – who marched into our office as Startup Walkabout; a tour checking in at Australia’s thriving startup scene.

Admittedly, we don’t share what Nitro looks like behind the scenes. Images of cross-departmental meetings gathered around a white board, introducing a new team member to the office, our COO Gina O’Reilly focused on her computer screen and the Engineering team clattering their keyboards in short, fast spurts – in other words, the high performance aspects of being a Nitronaut – aren’t as photogenic as the icing on our company cake: the fun stuff.

Nitro interns are a rare breed of human. They’re hungry for working world experience, and for taking on work that makes an impact on an organization. Dake Ying hails to us from UC Berkeley, where he is entering his junior year studying Economics and Computer Science, and a member of the Cal Volleyball team.

Sponsoring Scala by the Bay, the Scala developer’s conference taking place right in Nitro Headquarter’s backyard (historic Fort Mason in San Francisco), is super exciting. This two-day conference will cover a wide range of topics all about Scala – a language that has both academia and enterprise excited about functional programming.

Nitro Gives is the philanthropic arm of Nitro, making an effort to improve our local communities. Recently, we’ve had two initiatives that inspired Nitronauts and gave back to San Francisco, home of Nitro HQ.

Last year’s participation in the Silicon Valley Sports League left us here at Nitro hungry for more ways to engage with our local communities through sports. So when we opened an office on the Emerald Isle late last year, we wanted to find a way to give back to Dublin. The solution: partnering with the Cuala GAA Club as a proud sponsor of its Adult Footballers.

The new quarter is approaching, and you’ve been tasked with mapping out the budget for this segment of the year. Having finalized the figures, you save your gargantuan file to the shared drive (it’s too large for email!) and notify your organization’s finance director that it’s there and ready for sign-off.

Refreshing is rarely a word you hear in relation to the gender equality debate. Yet in her Fast Company article released today, United We Stand: Why Women and Men Need to Collaborate for Success, Nitro COO Gina O’Reilly gives us just that cool splash.