SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - March 24, 2011) - InsideView, the social selling and sales intelligence leader, today announced that it has closed a $12 million Series C round led by Foundation Capital, the investor behind market leaders such as Netflix, Chegg, Financial Engines, Rearden Commerce, MobileIron, Coverity, and SimplyHired. Also participating in the round are existing investors Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Greenhouse Capital Partners. More than 75,000 sales professionals across more than 1,000 companies are currently using InsideView's sales intelligence technology to find opportunities, create relationships, build trust and close business faster.
With the new funding, Foundation Capital General Partner and enterprise technology veteran Paul Holland will join InsideView's board of directors.
"This was a clear opportunity to invest in a market leader," said Holland. "InsideView has built the most powerful platform for analyzing vast amounts of data and delivering actionable information to sales organizations, increasing sales productivity and revenue. Now they are leading the way in social selling, transforming the exploding amount of social media into intelligence that impacts the sales cycle. InsideView has become a must-have application for companies that are looking to unlock the latent promise of CRM, and to make social data actionable for their organizations. Their technology is unmatched, their customers are successful, their partners are world-class, and their management team is experienced. We are excited to be part of InsideView's explosive growth."
InsideView will use the new funds to expand distribution partnerships, which will accelerate the availability of InsideView to the more than 10 million B2B sales people worldwide. InsideView will also continue to invest in market education, with innovative programs like the recently launched Social Selling University, set up to educate and train sales professionals in how to leverage social media to increase sales effectiveness. Participation in Social Selling University has been staggering in its first month, demonstrating the need for companies to embrace social media in their sales and marketing efforts.
The Market Recognizes the Importance of Sales Intelligence
Throughout the past year, InsideView and CEO Umberto Milletti have been recognized for many company and customer sales intelligence successes, including:
- User base growth from 20,000 to 75,000
- Record-breaking revenue growth of 135%
- Featured speaker at 2011 SXSW Interactive's Future15 Social Business program
- Elected to the Software Information Industry Association's (SIIA) board
- A JMP Securities' 'Hot 100' List of Best Privately Held Software Companies
- An IDC Innovate Software Companies Under $100M to watch
- Sole sales-related technology named to Gartner's Social CRM Magic Quadrant
- Sole sales-related technology named to ZDNet's CRM Watchlist, third year running
- Finalist in SIIA's annual CODiEs for Best Solution Integrating Content into Workflow & Best Content Aggregation Solution categories
- Winner of four Sales & Marketing 2.0 2011 Awards, including Best Use of Social Media for Sales
"Sales professionals are being overwhelmed by vast amounts of customer data, and they need help in distilling this data into highly targeted sales intelligence," said Milletti. "Our technology helps sales teams be more productive, successful, and increases company's top-line revenue by at least ten percent. The powerful sales intelligence we provide enables social selling and allows sales professionals to find opportunities, establish relationships, build trust, and close business faster." For more from Milletti on InsideView's new funding, please head to his Sales Intelligence blog.
InsideView gives sales teams the most comprehensive, current, and easy-to-use intelligence on any company and individual by aggregating data from 25,000+ news, editorial and social media sources. This intelligence can be delivered directly and seamlessly into all major CRM platforms (including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SAP and SugarCRM) to provide the most accurate, relevant and complete sales intelligence for greater sales productivity. To learn more, please visit www.insideview.com.
About InsideView
InsideView, the leading provider of sales intelligence, increases productivity and revenue by delivering relevant business and social insights to the point of need. Our award-winning technology gathers and analyzes information from the most relevant social media, user-contributed and traditional/proprietary editorial sources to provide compelling insights about companies and contacts directly within your CRM, browser, or mobile device. InsideView's products are used by more than 75,000 sales professionals, and over 1,000 market-leading companies including Adobe, BMC, Cap Gemini, Experian, and SuccessFactors. For more information, visit www.insideview.com.
About Foundation Capital
Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm driven by the singular goal of changing the world -- about leaving it a better place -- by building great companies. It is this entrepreneurial spirit along with a deep technical expertise that gives the partners the understanding, perspective, and enthusiasm to help promising companies in their formative stages. Foundation Capital targets innovative opportunities in cleantech, consumer Internet and infrastructure; telecommunications and networking; and enterprise software and on-demand services. Foundation Capital maintains investments in nearly 70 ventures, including Calix, Financial Engines, Netflix and Silver Spring Networks. For more information, visit www.foundationcapital.com.
About Emergence Capital Partners
Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services companies. Its mission is to help build market leaders in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Emergence partners have funded and helped build more than 50 TES companies, more than any other early-stage venture firm. Emergence Capital has assets of over $325 million under management. Investments include companies such as salesforce.com (CRM), SuccessFactors (SFSF), HireRight (HIRE), Box.net, Yammer, Veeva and InsideView. For more information, visit www.emcap.com.
About Rembrandt Venture Partners
Rembrandt Venture Partners (RVP) was established in 2004 to provide private equity capital to early-stage technology companies. Rembrandt invests in a variety of sectors including Internet infrastructure, software, communications, wireless and new media convergence. Rembrandt has assets of over $235 million under management. For more information, visit www.rembrandtvc.com.
About Greenhouse Capital Partners
Greenhouse Capital Partners is a Sausalito, Calif.-based early stage venture capital firm focused on funding exceptional startups at the earliest stages of company formation. The fund maintains a broad investment approach across a range of select emerging technologies, with a specific interest in cleantech and alternative energy innovations. The firm's approach is a return to the roots of venture capital, where it will take early stage risk right alongside entrepreneurs and help build companies that will last for years to come. Greenhouse investments include Windspire Energy (formerly Mariah Power), Solaicx, Lifefactory and Linkage Biosciences.
For more information visit www.greenhousecapital.net.
Contact Information:
Media Contact:
Emilie Cole or Steve Mnich
Insideview [at] launchsquad [dot] com
415-625-8555