Indianapolis-based
ExactTarget Inc. announced today that it has signed a $70 million financing
deal with three venture capital firms.
Led by
Boston-based Battery Ventures, the VC infusion includes investments from
Silicon Valley’s Scale Venture Partners and
The $70
million is similar to the amount the e-mail marketing services firm sought to
raise in its December 2007 application for an initial public offering. The
company since has delayed plans to list its stock on the NASDAQ composite index
under the symbol EXTG. It officially withdrew its IPO registration today, according to a regulatory filing.
“This is much better than an IPO,” CEO Scott Dorsey told Bloomberg, citing the volatile stock market. “In this environment, it’s the best path, and it positions us for an IPO down the road.”
The funding
will help ExactTarget expand both here and abroad, Dorsey said. The firm
announced yesterday that it added more than 250 new clients and increased
revenue in the first quarter by more than 40 percent compared with the same
time a year ago. It did not provide exact figures.
“We have
posted three consecutive years of profitability and continued
quarter-on-quarter growth with the addition of thousands of new direct clients,
but we know a significant amount of market opportunity remains both
domestically and internationally,” Dorsey said in a written statement.
ExactTarget
plans to announce the location of its first international office within the
next 30 days, the company said.
Rory O’Driscoll, a partner at Scale Venture Partners in Foster City, Calif., told Bloomberg that ExactTarget’s 2008 sales rose 50 percent last year, to $72 million, and the company made $1.7 million in profit in the first half of the year.
The only bigger venture deal this year, Bloomberg said, is the $75 million raised last month by Workday Inc., a software company based in Pleasanton, Calif.
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