Yext raises $50 million in Series F funding

Steven Loeb · June 4, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3754

The local marketing company has now raised $115 million at a $520 million valuation

The Internet has been great for businesses to get information out to their customers in greater speed than ever before. Got a big sale going on? Businesses can push it out to their own website, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter and a zillion other places on the Web.

After a while, though, it's gotta be insane trying to keep all of that information up to date. And then, if a customer sees that there is a sale, and then comes to the store to find out it already ended, they've probably just lost their business.

That is why so many businesses use Yext, which acts as solution to allow local businesses to have a centralized location to manage their marketing across 50 sites. The company has now raised $50 million in new funding, it was announced in a blog post on Wednesday.

The round was led by Deven Parekh at Insight Venture Partners, and also included existing investors Marker LLC, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), and Sutter Hill Ventures.

The company had previously raised over $65 million, most recently $27 million in a Series E round of investment in June of 2012. This round brings its total investment to over $115 million.

In its last round, the company was said to be valued at $270 million; with this latest round, reports are putting it at $520 million.

The New York City-based Yext lets marketers and businesses synchronize their data, including information about local content, listings, store pages, social pages, and campaigns, across different platforms, including local search services, as well as their own websites.

The company offers the Yext GeoMarketing Cloud, with lets marketers control their business listings across maps, directory sites, their own web and mobile apps and social media. So, for example, by using Yext, a bank, retailer, or small business will be able to keep customers informed of store locations, hours, or photos for all their branch locations everywhere, and in real-time.

The Yext Cloud is now used by 300,000 businesses, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies. The company has over 50 million locations around the world.  The company was also named #20 on Forbes Most Promising Companies 2014 list.

Founded in 2006, Yext started life as a pay-per-call ad business, which it eventually spun out as Felix. As the company started investing more in its online listing business, it sold off Felix to CityGrid Media in August 2012. The money is received was used to further fund the current version of Yext.

Last month the company made its first ever acquisition, buying up Citrrus, a software consulting company, which the company said "accelerates our ability to provide the best GeoMarketing software and services on the planet."

(Image source: yext.com/company/about)

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Yext

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Founded in 2006, Yext is the next Yellow Pages, offering superior local services to users, advertisers and publishers. Nearly 20,000 customers are now connected to Yext Calls, the company's flagship advertising service that sends local businesses pay-per-action phone calls. Dozens of leading publishers have installed Yext Numbers, the company's local search monetization system. Yext is fanatically focused on perfecting the local advertising experience, an enormous unsolved problem with incredible potential.

Our Mission

Our mission is to produce the best local search results everywhere.

"The Local Search Problem"

Today, people use hundreds of different sources for local information. If you wanted to find a spa, you might check Google, Yahoo!, Bing, SpaFinder.com, Yelp, MapQuest, TomTom Navigation, Foursquare and that's just the beginning. To provide you with this information, each of these local search tools has its own database that stores basic listing data like business name, address, and phone number, and enhanced information like pictures, descriptions, promotions and more. Since each source has its own database, there are 100s of databases of local information out there. But the problem is, they are totally disconnected, and whenever data changes, they quickly fall out of sync. In fact, on average, 6% of listings change each month, and the end result is that more than 20% of local search return factually incomplete information to end users. The end result is very frustrating for businesses and users.

Everybody Wins with Yext PowerListings

Yext PowerListings solves this huge problem by centralizing local search results across all those different sites with one system. It lets large and small businesses centrally control information across platforms, producing the best local search results for users everywhere. PowerListings helps businesses appear in the most possible local searches withguaranteed presence, stand out and look great with enhanced content like photos, descriptions, and real-time promotions in their listings, and track it all with full analytics. PowerListings is the only system with any of these features, and the results are awesome.

The PowerListings model is a "triple win" for businesses, publishers and users. Businesses get the most out of local search, publishers get compensated to accept great content, and users get the best information. Everybody wins.

Over 30,000 businesses use PowerListings to get the most out of local search every day.

Learn about our PowerListings Network, our state-of-the art network that updates information at blazing speeds.
Learn more about how PowerListings can help your small business get the most out of local search.
Learn more about how PowerListings can help your brand get the most out of local search.

Our Values

We think big, we learn fast – and we get stuff done. We are powered by an incredibly talented group of employees who work to produce the best local search information everywhere.

We are hiring the best and brightest to come join us on our mission. Check out our open positions.

We are fortunate to be backed by some of the best investors in the world – Sutter Hill Ventures (Palo Alto, CA),Institutional Venture Partners (Menlo Park, CA), and WGI investments (New York, NY). Yext was founded in 2006 by Howard Lerman, Brian Distelburger and Brent Metz, and is located in New York, NY.


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