Research platform Dovetail nudges unicorn status with $87 million Series A

Customer research platform Dovetail has raised US$63 million (A$87m) in a Series A for the software startup’s first major funding round.

The raise was led by Accel, with participation from existing investors including Blackbird, Felicis Ventures, Grok Ventures, and CultureAmp CEO Didier Elzinga. New backers include Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, Wedflow CEO Vlad Magdalin and Checkr CEO Daniel Yanisse.

It gives the business a post-money valuation of US$700 million (A$970m) and takes the total funding raised since its launch in 2017 to US$71 million.

The new funds are earmarked for investment in building the system of record for an organisation’s customer knowledge.

Founded by Benjamin Humphrey and Bradley Ayers, Dovetail now has more than 65 employees in offices in Sydney and San Francisco and more than 2,600  customers including Canva, Cisco, Deloitte, PwC, Porsche, Shopify and Starbucks, who use the research platform for deep customer understanding.

Humphrey said Dovetail is becoming a must-have for many organisations.

“Through the insights created on our platform, teams can quickly make good decisions based on everything they know about their customers,” he said.

“However, we have only scratched the surface. There are many more opportunities to serve unmet needs in this space. With Accel’s partnership and this new capital, I’m excited to continue growing our team to build new functionality and launch new products.”

Victoria Treyger, general partner at Felicis said that in the two years since they last invested in the company, the founders have defined the vision for the customer insights repository category.

”The company grew revenue 8x, built a recruiting machine that raised the bar with every new hire, and developed the superpower to rapidly iterate in every area of the business, from robust product releases to innovating on the product-led growth model to acquire enterprise customers,” she said.

“We are incredibly proud to be part of the Dovetail rocket ship.”

Some key milestones for the company over the past 12 months include growing revenue by nearly 3x with 20% growth in enterprise month-over-month; tripling headcount from 20 to 65 people; launching new reporting and data discovery features, and a participant management tool; gaining SOC 2 certification; opening a San Francisco hub; and launching integrations with Zoom, Google Drive, and Slack, along with an upcoming Atlassian integration.