Lithium
Technologies, the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power
the customer network, announced today that it completed an $18 million
round of Series C equity funding in December 2009, adding two new
venture capital partnerships – DAG
Ventures and Tenaya
Capital. The new funding will support the company’s extraordinary
current growth rates well into the future and solidify its
market-leading position. DAG Ventures and Tenaya Capital join three
current investors participating in the round -- Benchmark
Capital, Emergence
Capital and Shasta
Ventures – each of which also invested in a $12M Series B financing
round in June 2008.
The announcement comes on the heels of 2009 being another record fiscal
quarter and year for Lithium in terms of new product bookings, new
customers, and expansion with existing customers. The company’s growth
and momentum drove the decision to fuel the top-line around the world by
leveraging more capabilities and resources to expand the customer base.
"In a period when most companies were suffering from macro-economic
pressures, Lithium thrived and built a great team with powerful
solutions," said Peter Fenton, partner, Benchmark Capital. "It’s very
clear to us that Lithium’s deep roots in community management and
thought leadership in enterprise social media has allowed them to
differentiate and continuously drive value for their customers. With the
latest results and financing, Lithium is now uniquely positioned to
dominate this emerging market."
"Our customers have been extremely successful in building and managing
their social customer networks with the unique science in our software
as well as the expertise of our superb staff. That success has fueled
Lithium's explosive growth in the last 18 months. The additional funding
and venture partnerships will provide us with a tremendous lift into
2010 and beyond," said Lyle Fong, founder and CEO, Lithium
Technologies. "This is an exciting moment for Lithium as we will now
use these resources and momentum to be even more aggressive -- further
extending our leadership in Social CRM and customer communities, while
continuing to generate multi-million dollar returns for our customers."
Lithium is the leader in Social Customer Relationship Management (Social
CRM) solutions, giving companies the ability to create and manage their
own social customer networks, centering around community applications
and sophisticated integration with traditional CRM systems and
conversations across the social web. After launching several innovative
products this year including the Community Health Index, the Tribal
Knowledge Base and Lithium Mobile along with the content moderation
solution from the Keibi Technologies acquisition, the company has even
more exciting plans to drive customer success and business returns in
the form of accelerated innovation, brand promotion, and reduced support
costs. Industry leaders like Best Buy, Sony, AT&T, Research In Motion
Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal already rely on Lithium to deliver
industry-leading solutions for customer-to-customer interactions.
About Lithium Technologies
Lithium is the leading provider of Social CRM solutions to power the
customer network. Working with market leaders such as Best Buy, Sony,
AT&T, Research In Motion Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal, Lithium
is delivering the next generation of customer relationships by unlocking
the value of the social customer network. Lithium solutions combine the
power of online customer communities with the broader social web and
traditional CRM business processes to inspire customers to innovate,
promote, and support on the company's behalf. As a result, businesses
measurably improve their marketing and sales, accelerate innovation, and
increase customer satisfaction. Lithium's platform is proven in
high-volume, growth environments and provides the security, analytics,
APIs, and multi-language support that enterprises demand. Founded in
2001, Lithium is privately held with headquarters in Emeryville,
California. For more information on Lithium Technologies, visit www.lithium.com.
About DAG Ventures
DAG Ventures is a venture capital partnership investing in and helping
outstanding entrepreneurs create leading, long-term companies across a
range of markets. With roots from the 1980’s in cable TV,
infrastructure, media, and wireless industries, the partnership today is
privileged to work with world-class entrepreneurs as they build
tomorrow’s leaders in the information technology, energy, and life
science sectors. For more information on DAG Ventures, visit www.dagventures.com.
About Tenaya Capital
Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital firm with offices in Menlo
Park, California, and Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1995 as Lehman
Brothers Venture Partners, Tenaya Capital became an independent company
in 2009. Over the years it has raised five funds representing over $1
billion of committed capital, investing it in a wide range of
high-growth technology companies including software, consumer Internet,
communications, semiconductors, electronics, and cleantech. For more
information on Tenaya Capital, visit www.tenayacapital.com.
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital, a leading international venture capital firm, was
founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build
successful technology companies. Benchmark's general partners take a
team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver
a superior level of service to the firm's portfolio companies.
Benchmark's portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Infinera,
MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise
companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. The firm manages
nearly $3.5 billion in committed venture capital. For more information
on Benchmark Capital, visit www.benchmark.com.
About Emergence Capital
Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading
venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage
Technology-Enabled Services companies. Its mission is to help build
market leaders in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Emergence
partners have funded and helped build more than 35 TES companies, more
than any other early-stage venture firm. Emergence Capital has assets of
over $325 million under management. Emergence partners were early
investors in Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), as well as other market-leading
companies such as SuccessFactors (NASDAQ: SFSF), HireRight (IPO, merged
with USIS), aQuantive (IPO, acquired by Microsoft), DoubleClick (IPO,
acquired by Google), Ask Jeeves (IPO, acquired by IAC) and WebTV
(acquired by Microsoft). Through its close association with
Salesforce.com and other SaaS leaders, Emergence Capital Partners is
working to accelerate the movement of all software to the on-demand
model and is championing a new approach to venture capital investing.
For more information on Emergence Capital, visit www.emcap.com.
About Shasta Ventures
Shasta Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in
technology-enabled businesses serving consumers and enterprises. Located
in Menlo Park, California, Shasta Ventures has $460 million dollars
under management. Shasta was formed in 2004 by venture capital veterans
and has made nearly 40 investments to date across consumer and business
services, infrastructure and software. For more information on Shasta
Ventures, please visit www.shastaventures.com.
Lithium Technologies Media Relations
Dan Ziman, 510-318-6692
Dan.ziman@lithium.com
or
Ogilvy
PR
Elizabeth Crosta, 212-880-5301
Elizabeth.crosta@ogilvypr.com