A $48 million funding round co-led by a local investor and a Wall Street powerhouse will fuel ongoing innovation at project management software maker Mavenlink Inc.—and more speculation on the next steps in the fast-growing firm’s evolution.
Mavenlink makes cloud-based project- and team-management software for service providers that helps its clients streamline workflow online. Services include file sharing, expense tracking and security control; it can integrate with related offerings like Slack, Salesforce and QuickBooks.
The 11-year-old company this month completed a Series E funding round led by two prior investors, Newport Beach-based private equity firm Carrick Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.
The latest round—the largest venture capital deal in Orange County since Irvine fintech Acorns Grow Inc. raised $105 million in its own Series E in January—puts Mavenlink’s total funding at $111.5 million.
“We’ve been impressed with the Mavenlink team since the early days,” said Carrick co-founder and managing director Jim Madden when the round was announced.
Madden’s also on the board of Mavenlink, which includes Klaus Besier, former chief executive of SAP Americas, and Mark Midle, who leads technology investments for Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.
Mavenlink’s prior funding round three years ago valued it at more than $150 million, according to reports.
A valuation this time around hasn’t been disclosed; the January Series E round for Acorns Grow, by comparison, valued the closely watched, millennial-focused investment app maker at $860 million.
Notable project management software firms include big names like Slack and Atlassian Corp.—each has valuations well in the billions—and a slew of smaller firms, many of which have been securing funding of roughly $50 million and higher over the past year, according to industry reports.
An initial public offering remains possible but not imminent for Mavenlink.
“An IPO is always a consideration, and likely a financing decision we’ll make down the road,” Chief Executive Ray Grainger said in a round of interviews after the funding announcement.
Growth Mode
For now, the company’s focused on growth in customers and product.
The Series E is an investment “in new customer programs and accelerating our roadmap [on] innovations we have planned,” Grainger said.
A variety of product uses are on the way, said Grainger, a former managing partner at Accenture who started Mavenlink in 2008. The company got its first round of funding in 2011.
New areas of emphasis include resource management, supply chain, mobility, machine learning and artificial intelligence, he said.
Hiring Push
The flurry of money and activity comes amid a local and international hiring push.
The company counts more than 300 employees globally in offices in Irvine, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Boston, Melbourne, London and the Philippines.
About half are at its headquarters at the Discovery Park campus in the Spectrum, off Sand Canyon Avenue. It nearly doubled its footprint there last year to 64,000 square feet and signed a five-year lease.
Grainger in September told the Business Journal the company planned to nearly double local employment within 18 months to more than 320 workers. The latest funding should help the company achieve that goal, he said.
About a dozen local positions were being advertised at the company’s Irvine office as of last week.
Mavenlink was the 18th largest software maker in OC last year with 165 local employees through July, Business Journal research shows.
Grainger’s hiring projections would vault them into the top-10 among area software firms and within striking distance of the five largest local employers in the technology sector.
Profitability?
Mavenlink doesn’t provide revenue figures, but the company did show up on Deloitte’s Fast 500 list for technology this year, ranking No. 180 with a growth rate of 541% between 2014 and 2017.
A recent report in VentureBeat indicates the company isn’t profitable yet.
Its client list includes about 2,500 customers such as Salesforce.com, Qualtrics, Genpact, IPG, and Cornerstone OnDemand.
It has about 84,000 paying users, and offers its service in multiple tiers at a recurring monthly cost starting at $19 a month for smaller groups.
