Upon signing the term sheet for its most recent round of funding, G2 Crowd joined one of the tech industry’s most star-studded investment portfolios.
On Wednesday, the Chicago-based B2B software review platform announced that it has raised a $30 million Series B round of funding led by Accel. The funding will be used to scale the company across all departments and expand its reach in the industry.
The company’s newest lead investor is headquartered in Silicon Valley and counts companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Slack and Atlassian among its portfolio companies. Pritzker Group Venture Capital and LinkedIn also participated in the round.
“[Accel] came to us, and we initially told them that we were not looking for funding,” said CEO Tim Handorf. “Then I went to my co-founders to talk with them, and we saw this tremendous opportunity to partner with them and build our brands together.”
The brand isn’t the only thing G2 will be building. With a current employee count of close to 100, Handorf said he expects the company to reach 200 employees within the next year. In two years, he expects that number to be closer to 350.
Handorf said the company is expanding into new areas and working on some new projects as well, but that the details surrounding those projects are still under wraps.
Founded in 2012, G2 Crowd is a platform for user-generated reviews of business-to-business software. Handorf said he and his co-founders, who are all veterans of the B2B software industry, were frustrated with having to pitch business analysts to get word out about their products.
By creating a place where customers can share their experiences, the founders wanted to let companies focus on serving customers and let their reviews speak for themselves.
“If you think about it, it’s actually easier to get good information about a $100 hotel room than it is to get information about a $100,000 software purchase,” said Handorf. “The overarching vision of G2 Crowd is about bringing more transparency to B2B.”
G2 Crowd currently hosts more than 170,000 user reviews for more than 25,000 products to date. The company said it saw more than 300 percent growth in the 2016 fiscal year.
In a statement issued at the time of the announcement, Accel Partner Arun Mathew said his firm was attracted to the company’s rapid growth and its level of customer buy-in.
“There is a paradigm shift occurring as B2B buyers increasingly behave like consumers, relying on authentic online reviews and social media to make purchase decisions and no other company is better suited to catalyze this market opportunity than G2 Crowd,” said Mathew.
Image via G2 Crowd.
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