SHIFT, a real-time marketing platform, announced yesterday a Series B investment of $6 million from leading European venture firm, DN Capital.
SHIFT already works with more than 300 firms, which includes 10 of the top 20 global advertisers like Sony, American Express, Toyota, Red Bull and Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer. The investment will help Shift expand operations overseas in Europe, the next key region for the growth of their products, which help integrate marketing systems in new age technology landscapes. [ibimage==29567==Large==none==self==null]
“[DN Capital’s] experience in helping companies scale in Europe will be integral in helping SHIFT continue to deliver brands and agencies the technology needed to break down data silos and create more efficient ways to execute marketing across organizations,” co-founder and CEO James Borow said in a statement.
The company has one office in London and looks to open more international offices into 2014 with the help of DN. It was founded in 2010 by Borow and executive chairman Clark Landry as GraphEffect, which helped companies leverage Facebook advertising.
The company has raised $20 million to date and, with offices in Santa Monica, Palo Alto, New York and Chicago, have expanded their reach in advertising and marketing departments among Fortune 500s and social media companies.
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Sales have grown 300 percent in 2013, led by SHIFT’s key product, the Shift Open Marketing Cloud, which works to increase organizational efficiency, connecting people across and within organizations; Borow told TechCrunch that this technology could even be an alternative to companies like Salesforce.
“The industry's current marketing clouds can’t keep up with the rapid pace of software innovation and this forces people to work in silos, leaving marketers with a rigid set of tools that only meet some of their needs,” Borow said in a statement earlier this year.
The company’s progress is helped by being the only company worldwide to be distinguished by Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in API capacity. Last year, SHIFT added a former Facebook leader to the executive team: Adam Gerston led the Preferred Marketing Developers program at Facebook, which SHIFT is now a part of. He now formulates SHIFT’s strategic partnerships.
"Our mission is to build an ecosystem where marketers can work together, using the best tools to meet their goals,” Borow said. “We created the SHIFT Open Marketing Cloud to provide the most comprehensive and collaborative marketplace, where the leading apps are always available.” And now this mission can expand to impact companies around the world.
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