Chicago-based G2 Crowd, a service where users can review and demo software, has raised $55 million in Series C funding at a valuation of slightly less than $500 million, according to TechCrunch.
And G2 Crowd plans to continue expanding its business with this round of funding. Plus G2 Crowd is also planning to increase its staff by 500% in Chicago, San Francisco, and overseas. For example, the company is going to hire employees in Europe and Asia along with making some acquisitions.
This round of funding was led by IVP. Emergence Capital, Accel Partners, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital also participated in this round. In conjunction with the funding, Jules Maltz of IVP is joining G2 Crowd’s board of directors.
“When it comes to marketplaces, in today’s business climate it’s winner takes all. What Amazon is for consumers, G2 Crowd is becoming for businesses: the place to discover and buy the best business solutions,” said Maltz. “G2 Crowd is disrupting the $3.7 trillion enterprise technology market for buying and selling business solutions, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy. Small businesses to large enterprises like Nike and Facebook trust G2 Crowd to discover and buy the best solutions for their business.”
The last time G2 Crowd raised funding was in May 2017 and that was at $130 million post-money. This brings the total funding to $100 million.
G2 Crowd currently has 500,000 verified user reviews, which is more than double the reviews it had in May 2017. And the company is hitting 2 million people per month who visit the site to browse 58,500 products across 1,200 categories.
“We started as a way to help companies make better buying decisions. Now, the focus is on helping them reach their potential through digital transformation, more quickly than ever,” added G2 Crowd CEO and co-founder Godard Abel. “Traditionally, the analyst space has been plagued by misinformation created by misaligned incentives, as analyst firms and outdated lead generation tools with pay-to-play models determine rankings and grid placement,” said Arun Mathew, Partner at Accel, an early investor in Facebook. “G2 Crowd’s trust framework puts technology buyers first. Its incredible trajectory over the past year demonstrates its success.”
