An early entrant in the field of social media analytics appears to be hitting its stride nearly a decade into its existence. Boston-based Crimson Hexagon announced a $20 million round—after raising just $17.5 million in total previously—that’ll go toward a major expansion of staff as the firm pushes to its accelerate its growth, CEO Stephanie Newby told BostInno.
“We were probably a little ahead of our time, in terms of the depth of analytics,” she said of the firm, which was founded in 2007.
“These days the leading companies are the ones that listen to their customers and adapt their strategy,” Newby said—which is what Crimson Hexagon is focused on enabling. The company offers “social intelligence,” which involves unearthing what consumers are saying about a brand, product or advertising campaign on social media. The company’s repository of data includes 850 billion posts so far, which is expected to cross 1 trillion by year’s end.
“What that means is that all of that data is at the disposal of customers to mine for insights, to see what consumers are saying about them,” Newby said. Notable customers of Crimson Hexagon include Starbucks, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures, General Mills and Twitter itself.
"We’re particularly good at where the market has arrived."
Crimson Hexagon has achieved much of its growth so far—to 125 employees, 100 of them in Boston—organically, and has prided itself on being capital efficient, Newby said (“we travel in coach”). The company has also seen the market evolve in a way that’s beneficial to it; “we’re particularly good at where the market has arrived,” said Newby, who is also the founder of Golden Seeds, an early-stage investment firm focused on backing women-led companies.
Crimson Hexagon now plans to ramp up its hiring pace to reach a total headcount of 213 by the end of the year, with Boston landing at about 150-160, she said. Hiring in Boston will be across the board, with a special focus on sales and engineering/product. The company isn’t disclosing specific revenue figures but has been growing at about a 40-percent rate annually, which should get up to 60 percent this year, Newby said.
The new funding was led by Sageview Capital, a growth capital firm with offices in Greenwich, Conn., and Palo Alto. Newby said the company had been working on the round since October and she’s “glad we’re not going out today” to start raising money, given the worsening funding environment.
