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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowDemandJump Inc. is seeing so much interest from investors, it's having to turn some of them away.
The Indianapolis-based software firm announced Wednesday that it raised $6 million in venture funding from a consortium of high-profile investors, including Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Flyover Capital, Cultivation Capital, 4G Ventures, Bob Davoli and Hyde Park Venture Partners.
DemandJump makes software that allows companies such as Vera Bradley Inc. and Ashley Stewart Inc. to map its buyers, potential buyers and competitors, and target them where and when they are making buying decisions
The new funding will be invested into sales, marketing and product innovation expansion, company officials said.
“You’re going to see a significant increase in our workforce in pretty short order,” said DemandJump CEO Christopher Day.
Not only did DemandJump raise $1 million more than it was targeting in this round of funding, but it closed the door while other investors were still trying to get in, according to Day.
“We had additional interest, but we shut that off [for strategic reasons concerning cash needed and ownership stake],” Day said.
The latest funding round brought total investment in DemandJump, which was founded in 2015, to $8.55 million. DemandJump previously had two rounds of seed funding, raising $750,000 in November 2015 and $1.8 million in June 2016. Investors in those rounds included Hyde Park Venture Partners, 4G Ventures, Bob Davoli, Mark Hill and others.
So why is DemandJump seeing such demand from investors?
“The marketing industry as a whole is waking up and realizing they need to get a hold of their own destiny,” Day told IBJ. “At its core, that’s one of the things DemandJump helps its clients do.
“Our customers typically experience an average increase of 200 [percent] to 500 percent [return on investment] by leveraging insights and recommendations surfaced by our platform,” Day added.
The company is on a hiring spree. The new investment will help the company grow its employee count from 28 to more than 40 by year-end, Day said. DemandJump will add at least six people to its sales and marketing team, plus others in its “customer success and engineering” departments, Day added.
Though Day declined to divulge his company’s annual revenue, he said year-over-year growth was more than 450 percent in 2017. He said the company is not yet profitable.
DemandJump’s software is tailored for companies making retail consumer goods as well as financial services, hospitality and pharmaceutical firms. The software not only maps a company’s relevant business landscape, it applies advanced mathematics to help companies determine where and how to advertise. Day draws a parallel to quantitative hedge funds.
“We believe DemandJump’s platform incorporates a differentiated algorithmic solution that addresses the problem that marketers have had for decades—figuring out where and how to target and acquire qualified customers in the most efficient way possible,” Thad Langford, managing director of Flyover Capital, said in a written statement. “Their platform aims to help marketing teams reduce wasteful spending and supercharge performance with a solution designed to cut through the digital noise, and we are excited to be part of that.”
Currently, DemandJump sells its wares to end users—namely major brands. It does not currently sell its products to advertising agencies and marketing firms.
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