Tel Aviv, Israel-based Dapulse has come a long way since it was an internal communications tool at website builder Wix.com.
In 2012, the startup raised a $1.5 million seed round so it could be spun out as a company in its own right.
And today, having morphed into a full fledged project management SaaS, Dapulse is announcing the closing of $7.6 million in Series A funding.
The round — of which $2.6 million appears to have disclosed a little under than a year ago — is being led by Genesis partners. Existing backer Entrée Capital (including l1Capital Group) also participated.
I asked Dapulse co-founder and CEO Roy Man what’s changed since I last covered the startup almost 4 years ago. “Since then we had a process of reaching product market fit with our product,” he says.
“All project management tools that exist today are similar in essence. They look and behave differently, but eventually — you define projects, assign tasks and try to fit them all into a gantt chart. We’ve tried to create something radically different. We created a tool that communicates with people. It’s very visual, intuitive and one that people actually enjoy using”.
And despite the software’s incubation within in a tech company and initially targeting other tech companies, Man says Dapulse has found a home with companies who have otherwise never taken to project management software because of the perception that most solutions are hard to use or require you to change the way you work.
“There are all kind of project management tools out there, but they all seem very complex and very techy. There are good reasons why Dapulse is so different, it’s very visual and not based on text like all other tools,” he says.
“It’s simple and does not impose a hierarchy of projects and tasks that just list work and don’t help you manage, and it’s customizable — meaning that it fits you, exactly you and your team. You don’t feel it’s bloated with features and you’re also not missing anything”.
To date, Dapulse claims over 4,500 paying customers from 85 countries, and says this is doubling every 5 months. Its customers include small and large companies alike, from startups, such as WeWork, General Assembly, Uber, and Wix, to enterprises, such as AOL (owner of TechCrunch), Adidas, and Frost & Sullivan.