Death and taxes may be the only two certainties in life (according to Ben Franklin), but tax compliance software provider Avalara has raised $96 million with a pitch to make one a lot less painful.
The company’s whopping new round of growth capital will be used to buy out some undisclosed existing shareholders and to provide $50 million in new money for growth and acquisitions.
“This financing offers some long-term individual shareholders a liquidity event, while enabling more recent institutional investor to increase their stake,” said chief executive Scott McFarlane in a written statement (because no human actually speaks that way).
Transactional tax compliance may be boring (actually it IS boring), but it’s also a big business, and one that Warburg Pincus was happy to double down on, according to a statement from Justin Sadrian, a managing director at the private equity firm and director on the Avalara board.
Investors in the company include Sageview Capital, Warburg PIncus, Battery Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures, Arthur Ventures and other undisclosed institutional and individual investors.
Since 2004, Avalara has raised more than $300 million in capital (including the latest round).