Attentive
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Attentive raises another $40M for mobile messaging, will invest in helping customers respond to COVID-19
Mobile messaging startup Attentive continues to bring in new funding.
The startup raised a $40 million Series B last summer, followed by a $70 million Series C at the beginning of this year. Today it’s announcing that it’s extended the Series C by another $40 million, bringing the total round size to $110 million.
CEO Brian Long (who previously founded TapCommerce with his Attentive co-founder Andrew Jones and sold the company to Twitter) told me that the new funding closed just a week ago. He said the money comes from institutional investors who had wanted to participate in the Series C, but “for whatever reason, the timing didn’t work out.”
Then, as the startup wanted to invest in new areas — particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — Long reached out again. Once they saw Attentive’s numbers for the first quarter of 2020, the firms were willing to invest.
Apparently, the number of new customer sign-ups is only increasing, with Attentive now working with more than 1,000 businesses. Companies like Coach, Urban Outfitters, CB2, PacSun, Lulus and Jack in the Box use the platform to manage their mobile messaging, with tools around adding text message subscribers, creating engaging messages and tracking the results of those campaigns.
And while we’re at the beginning of what’s likely to be a dramatic slowdown in advertising and marketing, Long suggested that even if businesses pull back on acquiring new customers, they’ll still need to maintain a relationship with existing ones.
“CRM is such a critical channel for companies … email and text are the last thing you would shut down,” he said.
Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Coatue are the new investors in the Series C. Sequoia’s venture fund already led (or co-led) the Series C and the Series B, but Long said he was interested in working with the firm’s crossover fund — and with Coatue — partly because they invest in public companies as well.
Not that he has immediate plans for Attentive to go public, but he said, “It just creates optionality,” so that there are fewer financial pressures regardless of the route the company takes.
Other investors in the Series C include IVP, Bain Capital Ventures, NextView Ventures, Eniac Ventures and High Alpha.
“Attentive’s rapid growth is an indicator of how consumers are eager to find a more direct, personalized and efficient channel to interact with businesses,” said Jeff Wang, managing partner at Sequoia Capital Global Equities, in a statement. “We’ve been impressed by how quickly Attentive’s business has scaled, its strong customer momentum, and the expertise of the team. We are thrilled to increase Sequoia’s partnership with Attentive through our Global Equities fund.”
As for how Attentive is responding to COVID-19, the startup plans to create funds to help customers navigate the economic fallout. There will be more details released in the coming weeks, but Long said the idea is to launch funds focused on the e-commerce/retail, food/beverage and educational sectors, providing free access to Attentive tools and services “to help those companies get recharged.”
Long added that he hopes to grow Attentive’s headcount from 260 employees to more than 400 by the end of this year.
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Mobile messaging startup Attentive raises another $70M
Less than six months after it announced $40 million in funding, Attentive has raised another $70 million — this time in Series C funding.
The new round was led by Sequoia and IVP, two firms that were part of the Series B. Previous investors Eniac Ventures and NextView Ventures also participated.
CEO Brian Long (who, along with his Attentive co-founder Andrew Jones, sold his previous startup TapCommerce to Twitter) told me that he wasn’t planning to raise money again so soon, but things were going even better than expected, with a client list that has grown to more than 750 businesses, including Coach, Urban Outfitters, CB2, PacSun, Party City and Jack in the Box.
Long noted that it’s always smarter to raise money when things are going swimmingly, rather than dealing with the “not-so-fun process” of trying to raise “when you really need it.”
He added, “When you see that you’re doing that well, you think, ‘Hey, we should hire a lot more people to support this growth.’ And then the other piece is just being able to move faster into new areas.”
Long attributed the success Attentive has had thus far to the growing importance of text messages as a channel for businesses to reach consumers, particularly as those consumers are less inclined to open marketing emails or download retailers’ mobile apps. And in contrast to broader messaging platforms, Long said Attentive is “focused on just doing this channel right.”
He said the platform is designed to solve the main problems faced by retailers trying to build a mobile messaging strategy — first, by helping them create a text subscriber list in a way that complies with regulations, then by offering “the ability to send messages that frankly aren’t going to piss people off.”
“We want the messages to be relevant for the consumer, we want to send them things that they care about,” Long said. “The package is on the way, real-time customer service, a product that you were looking at recently is on-sale … there’s a lot of data that you can put to work in order to do it at scale.”
Looking ahead, he hopes to expand beyond the United States and Canada, and to move into industries beyond e-commerce — for example, into more traditional retail, and also to start working with colleges that are looking to attract more applicants.
“Attentive’s growth is a clear indication that people want to interact with brands in new ways, and brands are embracing messaging as an effective way to reach consumers,” said Sequoia partner Pat Grady in a statement. “We are thrilled to double down on our partnership with Attentive so they can continue to deliver fantastic results for their customers and valuable experiences for consumers.”
Attentive has now raised a total of $124 million.
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Sequoia leads $40M investment in mobile messaging startup Attentive
Attentive, a startup helping retailers personalize their mobile messages, is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding.
The startup was founded by Brian Long and Andrew Jones, who sold their previous startup TapCommerce to Twitter. When they announced Attentive’s $13 million Series A last year, Long told me the startup is all about helping retailers find better ways to communicate with customers, particularly as it’s harder for their individual apps to stand out.
Attentive’s first product allowed for what it calls “two-tap” sign-up, where users can tap on a promotion link from a brand’s website, creating a pre-populated text that opts them in to for SMS messages from that retailer.
Since then, it’s built a broader suite of messaging tools, with support for cart abandonment reminders, A/B testing, subscriber segmentation and other features that allow retailers to get smarter and more targeted in their messaging strategy.
The startup says mobile messages sent through its platform are seeing click-through rates of more than 30%, and that it now works with more than 400 customers, including Sephora, Urban Outfitters, Coach, CB2 and Jack in the Box.
The Series B was led by Sequoia, with participation from new investors IVP and High Alpha, as well as previous backers Bain Capital Ventures, Eniac Ventures and NextView Ventures. The plan for the new funding is to grow the entire team, especially sales and engineering.
“CRM is changing,” Long said in a statement. “Businesses can’t build a relationship with the modern consumer through email alone. Email performance, as measured by how many subscribers click-through on a message, is down 45% over the last five years. Rather than continuing to shout one-way messages at consumers, smart brands will stay relevant by embracing personalized, real-time, two-way communication channels.”
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TapCommerce’s founders are back with Attentive, a messaging startup that’s raised $13M
Attentive is coming out of stealth today with the announcement that it’s raised $13 million in Series A funding.
The company was founded by Brian Long and Andrew Jones. They previously founded TapCommerce, a mobile ad startup that was acquired by Twitter for a reported price of $100 million. Long and Jones both worked at Twitter for a couple of years before leaving to start something… Read More
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