With an explosion of people in search of freelance work during the Covid-19 pandemic, Boulder-based Cloud Campaign saw its business boom.
The company, which offers a software solution for marketing agencies and freelancers, grew its revenue by 200% and added more than 400 agency customers to its platform.
Now, with that wind at its back, Cloud Campaign has brought on a $5 million Series A funding round designed to build out its solution and double its staff.
The funding was led by Oregon Venture Fund and Colorado’s Access Venture Partners and comes after Cloud Campaign raised a $1.5 million seed round in January 2020.
Cloud Campaign, which was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2017 by CEO Ryan Born and Chief Marketing Officer Ross Gray, opened a Boulder office in tandem with that 2020 fundraise and has been growing steadily since.
The company’s solution gives marketing agencies and freelance marketers a platform to improve their workflows and scalability, primarily for social media management. Cloud Campaign has more than 7,600 companies and 9,000 users on its platform, including Hilton, BMW and Ernst & Young.
Despite the growth it experienced during 2020, the early months were rocky for Cloud Campaign. The company saw a high churn among its customers and Born said he was concerned for the future.
With an uncertain outlook, Cloud Campaign scaled back its growth plans and expected to have to weather the storm of a difficult year. But, as brick and mortar stores realized the importance of having a digital presence during the pandemic, business returned for Cloud Campaign.
“Then the switch flipped, and everything started growing quicker than before,” Born said, pointing to Cloud Campaigns tripled headcount in 2020.
The company will use this funding round to expand its platform from a social media management platform to a more comprehensive system for marketing agencies. Born said Cloud Campaign is looking to close the gap on the fragmented solutions that marketing agencies have been using.
“We see the opportunity to become the Shopify for marketing agencies, where any freelancer or marketing agency can come on our platform and have everything that they need to run their business,” he said.
Some of those key features include client management, invoices and other marketing automation tools.
In addition, Cloud Campaign will look to double its 13-person full-time team in Portland and Boulder. Locally, those hires will be focused on product and marketing teams.
The company chose to open a Boulder office after a positive experience in the Boomtown Accelerators 2019 program.
