G2 Crowd builds the world's largest business commerce platform fueled by $100M in funding

Series C round shows startup becoming next Amazon for business'

Chicago, IL - Oct. 11, 2018 - G2 Crowd, the marketplace revolutionizing how businesses discover, buy and manage software and services, today announced the close of a $55 million Series C led by IVP, with participation from Emergence Capital and returning investor, Accel, bringing the company's total fundraising to date to $100 million. As part of the financing, Jules Maltz from IVP has joined 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 IVP General Partner Jules Maltz, an investor in Twitter, Dropbox, Slack, and Mulesoft. 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.

Next Amazon for business'

Jason Green at Emergence, an investor in Salesforce, Box and Gusto, said G2 Crowd has the highest traffic and engagement, largest selection of products and services, and highest quality data of any B2B marketplace. G2 Crowd is already growing at an incredible rate, and this latest funding round will only help them build the next Amazon for business even faster.

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. said Godard Abel, CEO and co-founder of G2 Crowd.

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the analyst space has been plagued by misinformation created by misaligned incentives, as analyst firms and outdated lead generation tools with pay-to-play models determine rankings and grid placement, said Arun Mathew, Partner at Accel, an early investor in Facebook.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.

Helping businesses save over $34 billion each year

Businesses are now spending $1.4 trillion a year just on enterprise software and related IT services, and that figure is expected to keep jumping in the coming years.[1] On average, each enterprise is running nearly 1,200 cloud apps and services.[2]

But along with this massive proliferation of digital technologies comes a great deal of waste. Businesses in the U.S. and UK alone waste $34 billion each year in licensing fees for unused and underused software.[3] This does not include lost productivity and additional expenses due to glitchy or poorly performing solutions.

The solution is G2 Crowd, a unifying platform that matches businesses to the best fit software and services. The company makes its more than 500,000 verified-user reviews available for free on its website, which now attracts nearly two million business professionals each month. They discover unbiased information about more than 58,500 products across 1,200 categories, along with expert educational content on everything from IT to digital trends to logistics.

G2 Crowd leverages a proprietary algorithm and more than 18 million quantitative and qualitative data points to calculate user satisfaction, usability, traction and trajectory scores in real time. Traffic has been more than doubling year over year.

For businesses to reach their full potential, they need information they can trust, said CEO and Co-Founder Godard Abel. That's why G2 Crowd is quickly becoming the first step on every company's digital transformation journey. We're bringing authenticity and transparency to the business marketplace.

The new investments will spur growth in numerous ways, including a 500% headcount increase at offices in Chicago and San Francisco, as well as overseas.

About G2 Crowd:

The world's leading marketplace for business software and services, G2 Crowd drives better purchasing decisions. Business professionals, buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software and services based on more than 500,000 peer reviews and synthesized social data. Over 23 million business buyers around the world have trusted G2 Crowd to gain unique insights. Co-founded in 2012, G2 Crowd aims to bring authenticity and transparency to the business marketplace. The company also offers scholarships to college students who are aspiring entrepreneurs.

To learn more about G2 Crowd or write a review, please visit g2crowd.com.

[1] https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3871063

[2] https://resources.netskope.com/cloud-reports/february-2018-netskope-cloud-report

[3] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/report-unused-enterprise-software-is-costing-businesses-a-fortune/

LINK:	https://www.ivp.com/news/press-release/g2-crowd-builds-the-worlds-larg...
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