Madison venture capital firm 4490 Ventures led a $7.7 million Series A investment round for Chicago startup QualSights, according to a Monday announcement.
QualSights' insights technology platform helps brands, including a number of Fortune 500 companies, grow a deeper understanding of consumers.
"QualSights' team has created a suite of technologies that address a major gap in consumer behavior understanding," 4490 Ventures managing partner Dan Malven said in a statement. "It is a brilliant, globally scalable and defensible innovation."
Malven joins QualSights' board of directors.
The startup's founder and CEO Nihal Advani said QualSights wasn't raising money because it needed it, which is one reason why he felt he was able to find success fundraising despite a recent tightening market.
“We were raising money because it was going to help us accelerate further,” Advani told Wisconsin Inno's sister publication Chicago Inno. “There's so many things that we know that we could be doing that we haven't yet just because we didn't have the bandwidth, and now this allows us to kind of accelerate our hiring plans.”
QualSights has raised more than $12 million to date and is in full growth mode heading to 2023, Advani said. The latest capital raise gives QualSights a reason to accelerate without worrying about cash on hand.
With 80 people now on staff, Advani said QualSights will look to double its headcount in the next 18 months.
QualSights was named among the fastest-growing tech companies by both Inc. magazine and Deloitte this year and was named the SMS Assist Entrepreneurial Spirit Award winner at this year's Chicago Innovation Awards for its product consumption system that delivers accurate and detailed consumer behavior insights.
4490 Ventures invests in early-stage enterprise software startups that are leveraging web3 and focuses its capital outside of Silicon Valley. It has backed Wisconsin startups including Abodo (now known as Rentable), EatStreet and Understory.
