What happened: Unbounces raises $52 million in funding round
Why it matters: Tech company plans to boost headcount by 50% in coming years
Add Unbounce Marketing Solutions Inc. to the growing number of tech companies in Vancouver looking to hire.
The firm revealed Wednesday (June 17) the close of its first major funding round, coming in at $52 million.
With new capital in hand, the company plans to boost its 200-person team by 50% over the next three years.
Unbounce is best known for developing platforms that allow marketers to create landing pages without investing in their own web developers.
The company touts more than 1 billion conversions since its founding in 2009 and has had 15,000 customers worldwide, including Hootsuite Inc. and the New York Times.
Its revenue grew 490.7% from 2014-18, reaching $23.3 million by 2018, according to BIV data.
CEO Rick Perreault said in a statement the new capital will also help it boost its investments in machine learning.
The funding round was led by Denver-based private equity firm Crest Rock Partner, whose partners Steven Johnson and Jeff Carnes are joining Unbounce’s board of directors.
Unbounce also announced chief revenue officer Felicia Bochicchio is being promoted to company president, taking over from co-founder Carter Gilchrist.
Unbounce closed its Montreal office in 2017, under pressure from payments on around $4.5 million of debt and a squeezing of its profits due to foreign exchange rate fluctuations.
“That led us to have to make a really tough call, and to really re-evaluate how we were running the business, what we were doing and what we learned out of that,” Gilchrist, now a strategic adviser for Unbounce, told Business in Vancouver last year, adding the company’s revenues didn’t stop growing.
At that time, Gilchrist said the company’s profit was set to hit $2 million by the end of 2019.
—With files from Rolando Hinojosa
