Shasta Ventures

Monster Funding Round Marks the Return of Email - ExchangeWire.com

LiveIntent, an email-centric advertising platform, announced a $32.5 million funding round led by private equity firm FTV Capital, with participants including Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, and Shasta Ventures. The round also sees FTV Capital partner Liron Gitig joining LiveIntent’s board. The fresh capital will be used to enhance LiveIntent’s technology and to accelerate growth outside the U.S., beginning with the United Kingdom. LiveIntent counts over 400 brands and 750 email publishers on its network, with its platform reaching more than 90 million users each month. In a related move, LiveIntent announced an integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Active Audiences to enable marketers to orchestrate email campaigns across email, web, social, mobile, apps, and video. The funding underscores a shift toward people-based marketing and the increasing role of anonymized first-party data in targeting.

Mobile Marketing Automation Startup Snags $11.6 Million In Series B

Leanplum, a mobile marketing automation company, announced $11.6 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Shasta Ventures, bringing total funding to $17.2 million. CEO and co-founder Momchil Kyurkchiev, a former Google software engineer focused on YouTube ad monetization, said the capital will fund headcount growth from 33 to about 66 by year-end and hiring across marketing, sales, engineering, and product. The company also unveiled Lifecycle Engine, a visual campaign planning tool to design and test lifecycle timelines across channels. Leanplum counts StumbleUpon, Tesco, Expedia, and Ola Cabs as clients and integrates with providers like Marketo for email messaging. Headquartered in San Francisco, Leanplum maintains an engineering office in Bulgaria and a sales outpost in London, with plans for further international expansion into India, the UK, and Europe.

LiveIntent Gets $32.5 Million To Support Its People-Based Marketing Biz

LiveIntent, an email advertising and marketing platform, announced a $32.5 million growth equity round led by FTV Capital, with Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures participating. The funds will be used to expand LiveIntent’s platform and APIs for broader integration with marketing tech players such as Salesforce, and to accelerate its global push, particularly in Europe and the United Kingdom after opening a London office in the previous November. The company’s technology enables real-time, people-based advertising by hashing email addresses to anonymize users and link identities across email, web and mobile environments. LiveIntent serves more than 400 brands and 750 publishers, including The Wall Street Journal, Marriott, Condé Nast, Priceline, Kellogg’s and Kraft. CEO Matt Keiser described LiveIntent as a platform akin to Facebook or Pandora, aiming to give marketers first-party data-based, cross-device reach with tight attribution. Revenue growth has been strong, with 2012–2013 tripling and 2014 doubling, and retention above 99%.