For traditional, brick-and-mortar brands like Lululemon and Bass Pro Shops, the in-store sales experience is king.
But, how do you translate that unique in-store experience to a digital landscape? Brands that had wrestled with that question for years were forced to address it head-on as the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered many in-person interactions.
That’s where Colorado Springs-based SaaS startup Quantum Metric comes in.
The company’s platform helps organizations build better digital products faster. Its technology helps businesses capture customer behaviors and technical issues and prioritize product decisions based on real-time data.
And, as more companies searched for digital solutions, Quantum’s business boomed in 2020.
“It was a breakout year for Quantum, both we and our audiences of global 2000 companies realized how critical digital will be in our future, and then our future arrived five years early,” founder and CEO Mario Ciabarra said.
The company nearly doubled its staff and revenue during the pandemic and has now brought on a massive influx of capital that will vault it into an elite company.
Quantum Metric on Jan. 7 announced $200 million in Series B financing led by Insight Partners at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, securing its place as Colorado’s first new tech unicorn of 2021.
This financing round consisted of primary capital and secondary purchases from employees and other equity holders.
This round comes after the company announced in October that it secured up to $25 million of debt capital from Silicon Valley Bank. With its initial Series A round led by Insight Partners in 2018 and the closing of this round, Quantum Metric has raised nearly $250 million in capital in the last two years.
Quantum Metric’s continuous product design methodology uses real-time customer data to build and iterate digital products. This customer-centric approach to the product lifecycle allows companies to overcome organizational silos, streamline priorities and deliver products that improve the business and customer experience, Ciabarra said.
The company, which was founded in 2015, has a roster of customers that includes Neiman Marcus, Lenovo, Alaska Airlines, Lululemon and more.
The new funds will be used to support Quantum Metric’s growth, enabling it to continue to build features and functionality on its platform, while also investing in its product and support teams.
The company has about 220 employees spread across the world, including in offices in Denver and Colorado Springs. Following this round, Ciabarra said the company will look to grow to about 400 team members by the end of the year.
By the close of 2020, Quantum Metric achieved 1 billion unique visitors monthly, which accounts for about 20% of the world’s internet users. In looking at that growth, Ciabarra said Quantum’s product development will look to harness the massive amount of data gathered from its visitors.
“Investing in the technology, one of the things that shines in Quantum is how we surface insights,” he said. “Nobody wants more data and analytics, what they want more insights. So, how do we surface more of those insights?”
To further prove its recent growth, Quantum Metric landed at No. 124 on the 2020 Inc. 5000 list, reporting 2,945% growth over the past three years.
With this capital in the fold, Quantum Metric is ready to hit the ground running in 2021.
“After this pandemic is over, we’ll nostalgically go to the store and that’ll be fun for all of us,” Ciabarra said. “But, I don’t think we’re ever going back from digital.”
