附近上门

Boston-based competitive intelligence platform closed a $22 million Series B as the company looks to grow its customer base and double its team.

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The round was led by with participation from , , , and . Founded in 2015, the company has raised a total of $38 million to date.

With every company having a larger digital footprint to mine, Crayon鈥檚 platform gathers that growing amount of data to give its clients a more pronounced competitive edge, said co-founder and CEO . Hundreds of mid-sized and large enterprises use the platform to help them gain competitive intel in sales, marketing, product development and even corporate strategy.

鈥淲e really liked the cross-organizational value the company brings,鈥� said , a partner at Baird.

Competitive intel

The market of competitive intelligence is not new, but often has been hindered because data collected for such uses has been gathered manually, and therefore historically lags by the time a company tries to use it to increase its sales and marketing initiatives, Lopin said.

Crayon changes that model, he added.

鈥淲e are programmatic, real-time and inexpensive,鈥� he said.

Crayon recently surpassed the 500-customer threshold, and Lopin said the time is right to accelerate in the market. The company typically has doubled in both customers and sales year to year, although it closed last year short of that mark as the pandemic kept some potential customers from buying, he said.

鈥淚 think through COVID we learned how resilient the platform is,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he challenge we faced was getting potential customers off the sidelines.鈥�

Now with fresh capital under its belt, Crayon will invest in improving the platform as it looks for its own competitive advantages in the space against others such as Vancouver-based and San Francisco-based . The company also plans to double its 100-person team in the next year, Lopin said.

Crayon is at a 鈥渉it the gas kind of moment鈥� in its life, especially as sales technology and enablement platforms continue to see significant growth, Rocchio said.

鈥淚 think they are at a true inflection point for growth,鈥� he added.

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