US growth investment firm Accel Partners has led a $US63 million ($90.52 million) Series A funding round in Sydney-founded customer research software company Dovetail.
The round, which was supported by existing investors including Blackbird Ventures and US firm Felicis Ventures, gives Dovetail a post-money valuation of more than $US700 million.
Other investors in the round were existing investors Grok Ventures and Culture Amp chief executive Didier Elzinga as well as new investors, Slack chief executive Stewart Butterfield, Webflow chief executive Vlad Magdalin and Checkr chief executive Daniel Yanisse.
Dovetail has now raised $US71 million since Benjamin Humphrey and Bradley Ayers formed the business in 2017.
In a 19 January announcement, Dovetail said the new investment would be used to support further development of its software.
Dovetail claims to be a pioneer of corporate research repository software. The company’s technology brings information together ranging from recordings of user interviews to responses to satisfaction surveys. This provides a single, up to date, source of reference for knowledge about any customer which Dovetail says enables staff across an organisation to make better decisions more quickly.
Dovetail now has more than 2,600 corporate customers including innovation leaders such as Atlassian, Affirm, Arm Canva, Deloitte, PwC, Porsche, Shopify, Starbucks and Workday. Fortune 100 companies such as Cisco, Comcast, Intel and Merck are also Dovetail customers.
Humphrey, the company’s chief executive, said the technology was becoming a “must have” for many organisations but Dovetail so far had only scratched the surface in meeting demand.
Accel partner Rich Wong said: “Dovetail is quickly becoming the formative system of record for customer research, in the same way Atlassian did for developers. We’re excited to support the journey.”
Accel partner Arun Mathew said Dovetail’s slick user interface and powerful collaboration features were redefining how companies manage their product and customer experience.
General partner at Felicis Victoria Treyger said that in the two years since Felicis had invested Dovetail had increased its revenue eight-fold, with the founders executing on their vision with unmatched precision.
Blackbird partner Nick Crocker said his firm had first invested in Dovetail when it comprised just three people and had watched it develop into one of the fastest growing start-ups in Australia.
“If Dovetail continues on its current customer and revenue growth trajectory, it can achieve Atlassian scale success,” he said. “The velocity of product development, calibre of talent and customer obsession is stunning to watch.”
Dovetail says its customers use its data analysis, insight reporting and search capabilities in everything from product development to digital transformation.
Becky White, lead design researcher at Canva, said: “Dovetail brings everything into one place. Everyone in the product team can easily go in and view research; it makes everything less chaotic, more organised and the research team less stressed. Product teams can analyse in whichever way is best for them and their study; when they start to see those emerging themes and insights from the data, that’s the real power of Dovetail.”
Key milestones achieved by Dovetail over the last 12 months include increasing revenue nearly 3x, 20% growth in enterprise month-over-month; tripling headcount from 20 to 65 people; launching new reporting and data discovery features, opening a San Francisco hub and launching integrations with Zoom, Google Drive, and Slack. A soon to be launched Atlassian integration will enable users to weave customer insights into existing workflows, tools and processes.
Looking further forward, Dovetail plans to build on its core platform launching new technologies to support marketing, sales and customer support.
Image: A Dovetail analysis chart.