Six years after it last raised funds, Demandbase has more than doubled the amount raised with a $175 million financing arrangement. The financing was arranged by Vista Credit Partners, a subsidiary of Vista Equity Partners. The money will be used, it appears, to primarily fund product development.
Gabe Rogol, chief executive officer of Demandbase, commented, “We’re incredibly energized by this financing, which will enable us to execute on the big plans we have in store for new innovation and growth. Our company has innovated at a record pace over the last year and shown massive potential to transform how B2B companies go-to-market through new offerings and enhancements to our core product. This is always important, but right now, in an economy where every company needs to do more with less, it’s essential. We’re empowering teams to work smarter to achieve their revenue goals, using fewer resources and enjoying greater results.”
This is not a traditional funding round, and the deal’s terms were not published. Typically Vista Credit Partners provides customized debt and structured equity financing. The firm has more than $9.7bn deployed assets and has facilitated over 515 transactions. Recent financing deals include Deepwatch, Housecall Pro, Updater, and Rocket Lawyer.
Demandbase last raised funding in 2017, raising $65 million in a Series H funding round led by Sageview Capital and Silver Lake Waterman. In 2020 the company acquired Engagio, a leading ABM solution. Since then, the company has evolved to become a go-to-market platform. Its double acquisition of InsideView and DemandMatrix brought even account intelligence on its platform as it looks to fulfil its mission of “helping B2B companies hit their revenue goals with fewer resources” – Jon Miller, CMO, Demandbase.
Can Demandbase grow its leadership position?
The financing will help Demandbase remain a leader in the B2B marketing space. It enjoyed a successful Q4 and FY2022, including strong revenue growth and record bookings in the final quarter. Actual details of revenues are rarely shared. It will be interesting to see whether Vista influences this going forward. It consistently features in the leadership position across around 40 G2 leadership grids. These include the G2 Grid for Account Data Management, G2 Grid for Marketing Account Intelligence and the G2 Grid for Buyer Intent Data Providers
David Flannery, president of Vista Credit Partners, commented, “Demandbase is revolutionizing the GTM experience and driving results for B2B companies. Vista Credit Partners seeks to partner with companies that have a strong market position and a mission-critical product suite with the ability to transform their respective industries. We’re thrilled to partner with Gabe and the entire Demandbase team as they look to continue their path of innovation and build meaningful solutions for their customers.”
A strong roadmap for past and future
Over the last year, Demandbase has rolled out several product updates, including:
- Launched Workspaces, enabling organisations to partition accounts, available in 2023
- The market’s first 100% free Account Identification solution
- A unified sales intelligence and account engagement platform integrated with CRM
- Personalised and people-based advertising on a B2B demand-side platform
- Launched Demandbase Data (D2) Labs
Demandbase also extended and opened up its account-based intelligence platform. It more than doubled its mobile phone and company data in Demandbase One, from 10 million to over 30 million. It now has 127 million contacts, 76 million email addresses, and 30 million phone numbers across 80 million companies worldwide.
It also released Demandbase Intent, making its intent data available for use outside the Demandbase One platform.
There is more to come beyond Workspaces. Miller recently spoke to Enterprise Times and revealed further information about how the company intends to develop its platform. He commented, “One of the things we’re really going to be innovating on this year is helping our customers to identify the buying groups that sit in the enterprise, and then engage those buying groups.”
The second is developing what Miller described as the “self-driving go-to-market platform”. The inference is that the software will further automate processes such as outcome-based bidding strategies in its advertising platform.
Will Demandbase develop these solutions itself, or will it look to acquire expertise or technology from elsewhere?
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Without the details of how this financing is structured, it is difficult to determine whether Vista will influence decisions or whether there is a specific acquisition strategy that Demandbase is looking to follow. The next few months will be interesting. The general availability of Workspaces and what follows should shed light on how Demandbase will leverage this money.
What is perhaps surprising is that the investment is not focusing on growth. However, this could be a sensible approach in the current economic climate. It already has good brand recognition. However, as Miller shared, it needs to make people aware that Demandbase was reborn and now has a much greater portfolio of products and scope. That it featured in leadership positions in 39 Winter 2023 reports is significant.
