Marketing technology startup Terminus raised a $90 million Series C led by Boston’s Great Hill Partners to expand internationally and accelerate its hiring and innovation.
Terminus aims to provide an all-in-one platform for account-based marketing so companies can better target potential clients. CEO Tim Kopp said the platform has become especially useful to companies that lost revenue from in-person events or marketing during the pandemic.
“This digital transformation wave has really fueled us,” Kopp said. “We’re coming off a record year of growth.”
Existing investors Atlanta Ventures, Edison Partners and Hallet Capital also participated in the Series C round, which brought Terminus’ total investment to $120 million. Derek Schoettle and Chris Gaffney of Great Hill Partners will join the board of directors.
With the funding, Kopp said, Terminus already hired 30 employees and plans to hire 50 more. The company has just over 200 employees across its Atlanta, Indianapolis and San Francisco offices. Kopp said the company will take a hybrid work approach, allowing people to work remotely but having some days where they will go into the office to keep the team culture.
Terminus plans to open an office in London to better connect with its international clients and partners. Kopp said about 90% of Terminus’ clients are still from the U.S., but the startup has gotten more demand abroad.
“It just got to a tipping point where we weren’t really trying to go international, but our customers pulled us that way,” Kopp said.
The past year was one of transformation for Terminus, Kopp said.
The biggest change was Terminus’ mix of clients, Kopp said, which now includes more mainstream, enterprise companies instead of only high technology, software-driven companies.
In 2020, Terminus acquired predictive data company GrowFlare and Atlanta account-based chat startup Ramble to build out its suite of account-based marketing products. It was also recognized as one of Deloitte’s Tech Fast 500 companies for its 524% revenue growth over the last three years.
Kopp plans for 2021 to be the year of acceleration.
He said Terminus raised the Series C round to keep up with its demand. As a large private equity firm, Great Hill Partners should take the company through years of growth, Kopp said. Kopp said the main focus will be on customer success and expanding Terminus’ market reach.
Terminus was founded in the Atlanta Tech Village in 2014 at a time when Kopp said the startup was the only account-based marketing platform.
“The toughest job we had initially was building the whole category,” Kopp said. “We’re the pioneers, and now we’re the largest and most innovative company in the space now.”
The funding comes at a time of explosive growth for Atlanta’s technology ecosystem. Tech giants Airbnb and Microsoft announced plans to make Atlanta an East Coast hub, and local software startups Calendly and SalesLoft reached $1 billion valuations earlier this year.
