Coming off a $25 million growth equity round, web design startup Duda is looking to grow, not only in its Bay Area HQ and global offices, but here in Colorado as well.
Earlier this week, Duda, a web design platform for digital agencies and SaaS platforms, announced a $25 million growth equity round from Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE).
The round brings the total amount raised to date to $50 million and the company will use the financing to accelerate sales and marketing efforts and continue growing the research and development team.
After launching in 2009, Duda has opened offices in London, Tel Aviv and here in Louisville.
The company developed tools that are integrated into its website-building platform to enable professional website designers and digital agencies to increase efficiency and more effectively collaborate internally and with customers.
Duda works with a number of SaaS companies across multiple industries, including hotel and property management, fashion and beauty, CRM and digital marketing.
It employs 14 people out of its Louisville office, the company's primary customer-facing space, and is looking to hire account and technical account management roles, customer education, sales and sales engineering positions.
Located between Denver and Boulder, Duda's chief customer officer Oded Ouaknine said, Louisville provides a perfect location for the company to grow in.
"As other Silicon Valley companies have, Duda identified the thriving tech talent pipeline in the Denver/Boulder metro areas as a great location to grow. The area has a highly educated workforce, a high quality of life and a cost of living that’s reasonable compared to the San Francisco Bay Area," Ouaknine said.
The company also has customers in the area, something Ouaknine said is another benefit for having the Colorado office.
"Duda also already has a number of customers in the Denver metro area, and while we are not dependent on a physical location for our business, being in close proximity to a thriving tech market is very beneficial for us," he said.
That customer focus was also one of the primary reasons Susquehanna invested in Duda.
"While the Susquehanna team and I were initially impressed with the product, it wasn't until we started speaking with customers that we realized just how powerful the platform is for the thousands of web professionals it serves. Time and again, customers told us that Duda catalyzed the growth of their agencies," said SGE investor Noa Wolfson in a statement.
As part of the investment, Wolfson joined the company's board of directors alongside existing investors Oren Zeev and Pitango Venture Capital.
As Duda grows its local presence, Ouaknine said the company will look to be more active in the community.
"We are looking to build up local communities of designers and developers who are interested in using our platform to provide their customers with incredible digital presence," he said. "The goal is to have these independent communities support each other in improving their skill sets and Duda knowledge through meetups, user conferences and more. We think the greater Denver area would be a fantastic place to build out some of these groups."
