Localytics, one of Boston’s fastest rising stars in tech over the past few years, is now looking to speed things up even further. On Tuesday, the Boston-based mobile marketing and analytics specialist announced its largest round of funding yet—a $35 million Series D round that places the company among the best-funded in the area’s tech industry. Localytics has grown to a staff of 200—up from 30 a little more than two years ago—and expects to reach a headcount of 300 before the year closes out.
“We see this incredible potential to build, right here in Boston, a very large and significant company that transforms the way companies build relationships with their end users,” Localytics CEO and co-founder Raj Aggarwal told me in an interview.
Localytics didn’t disclose its valuation attached to the round. The company—a graduate of the first Techstars Boston class, in 2009—has now raised $60 million since its founding in 2008. The round was led by new investor Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) and included existing investors Foundation Capital and Polaris Partners.
Here are some more key points on Localytics and the new funding:
• “Predictive” app marketing. At its core, Localytics specializes in app analytics for better understanding app user behavior, such as what users are going to in the app and where they’re dropping off. The company’s rapid growth has come since Localytics began applying the analytics to marketing purposes—so that customers can, for instance, use the data to create customized messages in the app to try to engage or retain users.
Localytics is now aiming to predict what app users might do next.
Now, Localytics is taking that to another level by aiming to predict what users might do next—and enabling app owners to be proactive, for example by pushing personalized content to a user to prevent churn. The new predictive app marketing feature is entering open beta as of Tuesday.
• Customers and revenue. Among the most recent app makers to become customers are HBO Now, The Weather Channel, Nordstrom and MyFitnessPal. They join notable ongoing customers such as the New York Times, ESPN, eBay and Fox. Overall Localytics is used to support 32,000 apps. On revenue, Aggarwal said the company surpassed $10 million in 2014, more than doubling the company’s revenue a year earlier.
• Hiring and office expansion. About 140 of the company’s 200 employees are located at the Boston headquarters, with the rest at offices in San Francisco and London. Of the 100 employees expected to be added during the rest of this year, probably two-thirds will be in Boston, Aggarwal said. Localytics expects to be “doubling down” in Europe this year and tackling Asia-Pacific as a new market in the near future, he said. As for the company’s recent hiring growth: 40 new employees were added in January and February alone.
• Techstars Boston rankings. Last week, we learned that the Techstars Boston 2011 class has become the best-funded cohort of any Techstars session, with a $6 million round for Help Scout putting the class over the top. Now, with Localytics' new round, Techstars Boston can also claim the best-funded Techstars alumni company; Localytics has overtaken ClassPass, a Techstars New York 2012 company with $54.1 million in funding, in that regard.
• Big picture. Localytics is aiming to become a “very large and important company over the coming years,” Aggarwal said. “We’re in this for that big vision. We’ve always kind of talked about that. And once you get into a round of this size, you’re marching toward a certain place—and your investors feel the conviction that you can get there.”
