Salesforce Joins Datahug’s $4M Series-A, While Valley VCs Love Its ‘Who Knows Who’ Platform

Last October, Datahug, a ‘business networking automation’ startup, which is also being used by VCs, secured a €2.5 million Series A financing led by European VC DFJ Esprit. But it’s now adding to that pot. We’ve confirmed Salesforce has decided to join that round in an “expansion” of its Series A, which includes original investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson (in the US), DFJ Esprit (UK), Oyster Capital and leading Valley investor Ron Conway. The full A-round is now $4m and brings the total raised to $5.5M over two rounds.

Datahug was founded in 2010 in Ireland and is expanding sales aggressively into the US market. Current customers include European VCs Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit as well as Grant Thornton, Plantronics, BDO and CPL. Commenting, T Paul Thomas, CEO and cofounder with Connor Murphy of Datahug, says he’s been “impressed with the extremely positive response from US investors and customers.”

The startup estimates that it finds around 400 contacts per person that aren’t captured in any existing CRM system or database. The solution works by indexing existing communication logs – such as emails, contacts and calendar data – to create an enterprise-wide picture of “who knows who”. The platform then attributes a ‘HugRank’ score to show how well they know them. It requires no data entry to capture the relationships and connections that exist, making it pretty easy to use.