Spredfast Raises $18 Million in Venture Capital

Spredfast, the leading independent social marketing software provider, today announced that it has raised $18 million in venture capital. The round was led by OpenView Venture Partners, with follow-on investment participation from existing investors Austin Ventures and InterWest Partners.

The funding comes as Spredfast reports 400 percent revenue growth and a doubling in employee headcount in 2012. The company plans to use the capital to fuel continued investment in its technology platform and to grow the team to support increased adoption of its social marketing platform.

With large companies now managing social programs across dozens of brands, localities and countries, the need for a robust technology solution that gives enterprises an efficient, effective way to manage their social interactions has never been greater. Spredfast’s Social Engagement Index shows that the average large company now manages social activity across 21 groups and nearly 100 social accounts. At the same time, social has become an integral part of the marketing mix and now commands larger budgets, driving the need for trusted mechanisms to tie social programs to business outcomes.

Spredfast offers the only social marketing platform designed to serve the evolving needs of leading brands. The company works with many of the world’s top companies and agencies to help them monitor, coordinate and measure social media with one robust platform.

“For the past few years we have been tracking the social media management space and believe the market is at an inflection point. Companies are no longer concerned with Likes, but rather with building real customer engagement and value across their social networks,” said Adam Marcus, Managing Director at OpenView Venture Partners. “We believe Spredfast has built the only true enterprise-class product to help the Fortune 1000 manage this incredibly important channel. We couldn’t be happier to partner with this tremendous team to build a category-defining company.”

The funding caps off a year of explosive growth for Spredfast. Recent company milestones include:

• New customer acquisitions of leading enterprise social brands, including AT&T, Caterpillar, Rackspace and Starbucks, as well as expanded relationships with AAA, T. Rowe Price, Whole Foods Market and Warner Brothers.
• Acceptance into Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer Program, Twitter’s Certified Products Program and LinkedIn’s Social Media Management Partner Program.
• Integration of Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews into the Spredfast platform for easy social amplification of authentic word-of-mouth.
• Innovative new product capabilities to help enterprise deployment of social, including role-specific workspaces, enhanced workflow automation, comparative performance analytics, and rich analytics and post targeting across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

“Social is rapidly becoming the preferred interaction mechanism for consumers and business people alike. The time is fast approaching when your customers will no longer email or call you — they will send out a signal via social and expect a thoughtful response. They’ll expect you to know about them and for you to offer them something of value for their attention,” said Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast. “Spredfast’s customers understand the strategic advantage of laying the technical and organizational foundation for this future now, working with a trusted partner whose entire focus is social.”

About Spredfast:

Based in Austin, Texas, Spredfast provides social media management software that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their social media programs at scale. Spredfast enables more people, in more places, to engage in more conversations from a single platform on supported social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, and popular blogging platforms. Some of the enterprise and agency adopters on board with Spredfast include AT&T, Jason’s Deli, Warner Brothers, Whole Foods Market, AARP, AGAIN Interactive, Coty Beauty, HomeAway and WCG. For more information, visit www.spredfast.com

About OpenView Venture Partners:

OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture capital fund based in Boston that is focused on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies quickly optimize their product, go-to-market, and organizational and operational functions. Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has approximately $440 million in total capital under management.

Media Contacts: Brittany Edwards Spredfast [email protected] (512) 359-6055

Kevin Cain OpenView Venture Partners [email protected] (617) 478-0984

SOURCE Spredfast