InsideView, a service that mashes up social data for enterprises to increase sales productivity, has raised $12 million in Series C funding led by Foundation Capital with Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Greenhouse Capital Partners participating in the investment round. This brings InsideView’s total funding up to $37 million.
The company’s flagship product, SalesView, crawls through more than 20,000 web sites, social networks and databases including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hoovers, Reuters, and SEC filings, to give businesses sales intelligence and information that will aid sales operations with helping develop and maintain leads and clients.
SalesView is available as a stand-alone Web application as well as integrated with CRM vendors like SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and SalesForce.com. The service currently has over 75,000 users with more than 1,000 companies that access SalesView’s feed, including Ariba, Centive, Cisco/WebEx, JobScience, and SuccessFactors.
In 2010, revenue grew 130 percent and CEO Umberto Milletti says that sales are expected to increase by 100 percent in 2011. Milletti says that interest in using InsideView’s product has increased as social media becomes a crucial part of the sales process in the enterprise.
“Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in the enterprise is no longer an ‘if,’” he says, “It is a reality.” Of course, it would make sense for an enterprise company playing in the CRM space (i.e. Salesforce, Microsoft) to buy InsideView. But Milletti believes InsideView is best as across-platform company that will remain independent.
InsideView will use the new funds to expand distribution partnerships and to invest in market education to train sales people to use its applications. Competitors include Hoovers and Genius.
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