Nothing like starting off a Tuesday with $20 million in fresh funding.
That’s the news coming from ActiveCampaign this morning. The company, which makes a marketing automation platform that helps small and medium-sized businesses manage their customer life cycles, was founded in 2003 and had yet to take in any outside funding.
“We’re looking to be the data intelligence brain of a company for their marketing, sales and company success teams — to consume all the data from different points, make it actionable and then bring it back to where it needs to go,” said ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom.
What that ends up looking like, he said, is engaging with customers in a way that combines strategic human touch and automation. From the first point of contact, customers are lead through their marketing and sales cycles with personalized, intelligence-drive insights designed to grow their businesses.
The check was inked by Silversmith Capital Partners, a growth equity firm located in Boston, and will primarily be used to grow the company’s headcount.
“We’re hiring across the board. Growth has been so substantial that we can’t effectively keep up,” VandeBoom said.
It’s quite an impressive hiring streak. The CEO said his team stood at just 14 at the start of 2015. Today, that number has ballooned to about 75, with open positions for everything from full-stack developers and customer support specialists to a vice president of sales who will oversee a crew of salespeople charged with harvesting a surplus of new business opportunities.
“We’re touching maybe 10 percent of organic leads that are coming in,” he said. “It’s entirely in-bound — it’s like cherry-picking galore. It’s a good problem to have,” he said.
Still, VandeBoom said the pace he’s struck in hiring is a bit slower than what the company’s need demands. But by ensuring the right leadership and hiring processes are in place to support the growing company before it scales, VandeBoom said he’s been able to avoid taking any cultural hits.
“By being so careful on the hiring part, we haven’t had any real cultural changes. That’s something we’ve been able to maintain from back when we were just about eight people,” he said.
In addition to hiring, VandeBoom said they're currently in the market for a new office space. VandeBoom said the company moved into its current office above Union Station about a year ago and is on track to outgrow it in the coming months.
Image via ActiveCampaign.
What's your company's story? Send us a tip or tweet us @BuiltInChicago
