As consumers, many of us have become so numb to marketing messages that we skip the product fluff and head straight to the user reviews. It holds true for everything from coffee beans to movies.
And business software is no different.
People want to know what others are saying, what their experiences were and, in essence, they want to see the good, the bad and the ugly before breaking off a chunk of budget to bring on new software.
Austin startup TrustRadius has made these B2B software reviews its mainstay, pledging real reviews by real people through multi-step verification, and it offers a pretty broad menu of software that ranges from sales programs to IT to marketing and specialized software for the medical and construction industries. Meanwhile, reviews on TrustRadius can be syndicated out to vendors who can use the feedback to help with their sales and marketing operations.
On Tuesday, the company announced it has secured a $12.5 million Series C led by Austin's Next Coast Ventures, along with continued investment from Mayfield Fund in the Bay Area and LiveOak Venture Partners in Austin.
TrustRadius, founded by CEO Vinay Bhagat and VP of Product Scott Miller, plans to use the new funding to double its current headcount of 59 through next year and expand sales and engineering efforts.
TrustRadius was founded in 2012 by Bhagat, who previously founded SaaS startup Convio, which went public in 2010, and Miller, who was previously chief revenue officer at Vast.com and, before that, led teams at SolarWinds and was a senior associate at Austin Ventures.
In a blog post, Next Coast Ventures said that at least half of the TrustRadius team have worked at companies they have invested in or worked with through board appointments.
And the trend is continuing.
TrustRadius recently hired Jennifer Griffin, who previously worked with Dosh, which is backed by Next Coast, and Bazaarvoice, as its VP of customer success.
"Business technology buyers want the whole truth before they buy. They want to hear from people who face the same challenges - their peers in similar companies. We’re experiencing rapid acceleration in the adoption of customer reviews in B2B mirroring what’s already occurred in B2C," Bhagat said in a news release. "We wanted to partner with an investor that understood this trend - has invested in the consumer review space and enterprise software - and could both guide and fuel our next phase of growth."
The new money brings TrustRadius' total funding to about $25 million. It raised a $5.5 million Series B led by LiveOak Venture Partners in 2017 and added former Slack CMO Bill Macaitis on as a board member. The startup's $5 million Series A round, led by Mayfield Fund, came in 2013.
The startup's other investors have included Bazaarvoice and data.world founder Brett Hurt, Vertica and Tamr founder Andy Palmer, Intelliquest and Zilliant founder Peter Zandan and Capital Factory.
