uTest Closes one of the Largest Financing Rounds to Increase Development and Expansion
Today uTest closed a $17 million Series D financing round bringing their total funding to more than $37 million. The additional capital will be used to launch developer tools, open regional offices, and scale faster through M&A opportunities and expert recruiting. The $17 million D round marks one of the largest investments made in a crowdsourcing company. It follows a successful C round that raised $13 million which closed in September 2010. Previous investors participating in this round include Scale Ventures, Longworth Partners, Egan-Managed Capital, and Mesco Ltd.
As the first crowdsourcing company to receive a fourth round of funding, uTest proved their worth with year-over-year growth of 250% since 2008. Combined with their rapid customer adoption of in-the-wild testing and the launch of usability, localization, and security testing services, uTest saw their valuation more than double in the past 15 months. This helped them attract interest from multiple VC firms from which they chose QuestMark Partners. In addition to the competitive nature of this financing round, uTest was also offered additional funding which they declined.
In an interview with Matt Johnston, CMO of uTest, he credited the company’s community of testers with helping the company reach this landmark achievement. More than 45,000 professional testers from 181 countries around the world make up the crowd of testers at uTest.
Our job is to work with customers, manage our community, build software plans and our brand, but they’re the ones that do all of the valuable work. They’re testing the iPhone apps in swarming metropolitan cities like New York and iPad apps in remote areas of Canada. We’re incredibly thankful for our community.
Matt Johnston, Chief Marketing Officer, uTest
Also helpful to uTest’s growth is the expansion of the apps universe, Johnston said. Though there used to be a time when a company’s website might have been their only application, now many companies have an iPhone application, a mobile website, and other additional apps to accompany their basic company website. “There are more apps out there that need to work under crazy conditions, whether it’s spotty 3G coverage or an overload of activity,” Johnston said. “With more devices and more browsers, there’s a huge increase in apps out there.”
With the additional capital, uTest plans on significantly increasing their already steep revenue growth by creating additional tools for its developers and expanding its geographical footprint, among a list of other paths. uTest is focusing on serving its customers by creating and launching tools designed specifically for app developers and testers. This in turn will help develop and launch better web and mobile apps. With regards to expansion, uTest will be opening a new Seattle location in the next week or two, as well as offices in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago in the near future to add to its current locations in Boston, New York, and San Francisco.
Most of all, Johnston, who spoke on behalf of uTest, said the company hopes this milestone encourages other start-ups to keep pushing boundaries.
We’re all kindred spirits trying to make this promising [crowdsourcing] model work commercially. Hopefully this milestone is another proof point to other crowdsourcing start-ups that they can raise a B and C round of funding. Hopefully this opens up other opportunities for more crowdsourcing companies, so we do see one file an IPO soon. We consider them friends; we’re all pulling for eachother because, though we’re in different industries, we need to pave the way for other crowdsourcing start-ups. This isn’t technical innovation, it’s people innovation.
Matt Johnston, Chief Marketing Officer, uTest