Venture firm makes largest investment

Software-focused early-stage venture capital firm EVP has made its largest investment to date, $8 million to lead a $9.5 million capital raising round for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven marketing investment analytics business Mutinex.

Sydney-based EVP has now invested almost $12 million in Mutinex across two financings inside 12 months.

The new capital raising values Mutinex at $75 million.

According to Founders Henry Innis and Matt Farrugia, social media now rapidly influences customers to change their purchasing preferences and businesses are recognising this by making increasing investments in digital marketing. The problem businesses face is where do they target their digital advertising spend day-to-day?

Mutinex offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing analytics and econometrics platform, GrowthOS, designed to help companies make better decisions on how they allocate marketing spend and to make those decisions more quickly.  

Innis, the company’s chief executive, says the GrowthOS platform specialises in marketing mix modelling, an application of econometrics that demonstrates return on investment (ROI). He says use of the technology can increase ROI by up to 20%.

Mutinex plans to spend much of the new capital expanding to the US with Innis and some of the Sydney team to relocate to New York City.

Current users of Mutinex include Intuit Australia, Youi Insurance and Samsung Australia.

According to EVP partner, and Mutinex board member, Justin Lipman, Mutinex is growing as fast as EVP’s most successful investment to date, Siteminder (ASX: SDR) at the same stage in its development.

Image: Mutinex founders Matt Farrugia and Henry Innis.