Infer, provider of predictive analytics, raises $25M
Redpoint Ventures leads round bringing total funds raised to $35M
[Correction: To reflect the total amount raised.]
Infer announced that it's raised $25 million in a Series B round, led by Redpoint Ventures. This brings the total round to $35 million since the Palo Alto, Calif-company was founded in 2010.
Infer's product provides so-called "predictive analytics" to sales and marketing organizations. In other words, it helps its clients - mainly corporations that sell to other corporations, such as AdRoll, New Relic, Box and SurveyMonkey - identify new customers. "If a B2B (business-to-business) customer has a lead or contact, they can pass that name to us and we can come back with a score and say how likely that contact will become a customer," explained Jamie Grenney, VP of marketing at Infer. "Once they get that info, they can feed that number into Salesforce and Marketo, and a sales rep will follow up."
The score is a product of data mining across public filings and a potential customer's own website. "We'll look at who the company's hiring and what they're buying and distill that down into a score for how likely they'll be a buyer."
Infer doesn't break out how many companies it counts as clients or the number of different kinds of predictions its software can handle, but Grenney did say that the company runs about 50 million predictions a quarter, most of which are along the lines of predicting future buyers. Most of the predictions are specially tailored for each company so it's not a one-size-fits-all product.
The company makes money on a volume-based annual subscription, based on how many predictions the company plans on requesting each year.
As for how much customers pay, Grenney said that customers are paying 107% of what they spend on marketing automation.
Bambi Francisco Roizen
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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