Showpad, the Belgium and San Francisco-based startup that provides mobile-first software to help support sales teams with up-to-date information and the materials they need to close more sales, has raised an additional $8.5 million in funding. Investment comes from Dawn Capital, who led the round, along with previous investor Hummingbird Ventures.
Interestingly, the company says it’s already seeing $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue, so this injection of cash is a classic example of ‘stepping on the gas’ as Showpad looks to accelerate growth in the U.S. and Europe. This will include opening an office in London and investing “more in sales and marketing”, as well as “accelerating the delivery of the startup’s product roadmap,” co-founder and CEO Pieterjan Bouten tells me.
Founded in 2011, Showpad is another company riding the consumerisation of enterprise software trend, this time with mobile, tablet and web apps, underpinned by its cloud platform for hosting sales content uploaded by marketing and other sales support staff — with the idea being to make it easy for sales teams to have all the necessary sales & marketing info on tap when they’re in front of prospective customers.
Additional functionality includes caching/offline access for when sales reps are out on the road, push notifications to communicate with sales staff via in-app broadcasts, and usage analytics so that marketing people can better understand what sales materials are actually being used in the wild.
Explaining the problem Showpad has set out to solve, Bouten says that “sales and marketing alignment in B2B is broken, costing companies billions of dollars every year.” In practice, this can be something as straightforward as marketing staff not being able to ensure that all sales reps are equipped with the latest and most up-to-date materials, such as presentations, product sheets and price lists, meaning they lack control. Or that sales reps simply have a hard time locating the correct marketing material, or don’t bother using it at all.
“Up to 7 hours a week is lost looking for the right materials,” says Bouten. “Marketing has no insight on what is happening in the sales process. What happens during and after sales interactions is a blind spot. With Showpad, our customers have a solution.”
The ultimate aim being to “shorten sales cycles, close more business and accelerate their sales,” he adds.
To that end, Showpad claims more than 500 customers, both SMEs and “big business customers from a range of industries”. These include iXerox, Intel, Schneider, Wyndham, and Audi. The startup also expects to grow to more than $10 million in annual recurring revenue in 2015.