TrustRadius, an online platform for user-generated reviews of business software, has raised a $5 million Series A round from Mayfield Fund.
The Austin-based startup, which had previously been bootstrapped, will use the funding to add staff and expand the site’s content and features. Mayfield Fund partner Rajeev Batra will join TrustRadius’ board of directors.
Founder and CEO Vinay Bhagat tells me the idea for TrustRadius arose from problems he experienced at his last company, Convio, which went public in 2010 and was acquired last year for $325 million.
Bhagat says he vividly remembers the company buying expensive software and deploying it to hundreds of employees only to find that it was a bad fit with the team.
“It was a disaster,” he recalls, explaining that the company had over-relied on traditional sources, from references to materials from a sales person. Bhagat says it “baffles me that I can get so much information about a restaurant recommendation…but no easy access to the same level of intelligence if I’m making a big business decision.”
TrustRadius, which launched publicly in May, offers users peer reviews of enterprise software, with useful, albeit fairly standard, features like side-by-side comparisons. The site looks interesting and could fill a nice need for businesses, but lacks a critical mass of content right now.
Indeed, Bhagat says the company’s biggest challenge so far has been scaling the content, but he says he’s confident that the content is high quality and the platform’s audience will continue to grow.