Yext™ Raises $25 Million from Institutional Venture Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures to Accelerate Growth of Pay-Per-Action Phone Calls
NEW YORK, Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ — Yext (www.yext.com), a rapidly growing local Internet advertising company, today announced that it has raised $25 million led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) with participation from Sutter Hill Ventures which led previous investments. The funding will be used to accelerate the growth of pay-per-action phone calls.
“We are excited to announce this investment and to have IVP as a new investor to help us build the company,” said Howard Lerman, CEO and co-founder of Yext. “We plan to aggressively grow the company and the technology so we can continue to provide the best local advertising experience on the web.”
Yext employs several key technologies to deliver a local advertising experience of unprecedented quality. The company’s service, YextCalls™, is the first system to send local advertisers pay-per-action phone calls. The unique technology understands consumer actions that occur on phone calls and charges local businesses only for relevant calls.
“We are confident that Yext will become a leader in local web-based advertising,” said Dennis Phelps, General Partner at IVP and Yext’s new board member. “Howard, Brian and Brent’s company has the potential to solve this huge problem by focusing on advertisers as users.”
“Local advertising is very challenging, and the technology developed by Yext is significant,” said Andy Sheehan, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures and a Yext board member. “Yext delivers local advertising of exceptional quality to its customers, while also driving high yield on local search inventory for its publishing partners.”
GCA Savvian served as exclusive financial advisor to the company in connection with this transaction.
About Yext, Inc.
Founded in 2006, Yext is the next Yellow Pages, offering superior local services to users, advertisers and publishers. Nearly 20,000 customers are now connected to Yext Calls, the company’s flagship advertising service that sends local businesses pay-per-action phone calls. Dozens of leading publishers have installed Yext Numbers, the company’s local search monetization system. Yext is fanatically focused on perfecting the local advertising experience, an enormous unsolved problem with incredible potential.
About Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)
With more than $2.2 billion of committed capital, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is one of the premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms in the United States. The partnership is currently investing IVP XII, a $600 million later-stage fund focused on investments in rapidly-growing technology and media companies. Founded in 1980, IVP has a 28-year IRR of 43.2% and has invested in over 300 companies, 85 of which have gone public. IVP specializes in venture growth investments, industry rollups, founder liquidity transactions and select public market investments. Since its inception, IVP has invested in such notable companies as ArcSight (ARST), Ask Jeeves (IACI), Aspect Communications (ASPT), At Road (ARDI), Business.com (RHD), Clarify (CLFY), ComScore (SCOR), Concur Technologies (CNQR), Danger (MSFT), Digital River (DRIV), Form Factor (FORM), Foundry Networks (FDRY), Juniper Networks (JNPR), LSI Corporation (LSI), Mobile 365 (SY), MySQL (JAVA), Netflix (NFLX), Polycom (PLCM), Quigo (TWX), Seagate (STX), Synchronoss (SNCR), Tivo (TIVO) and Websense (WBSN). IVP has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.ivp.com.
About Sutter Hill Ventures
Sutter Hill Ventures is a venture capital firm that finances technology-based start-up and early-stage companies that pioneer products or services in growth markets, especially those in information technology and health care. Founded in 1964, it is one of Silicon Valley’s original venture capital firms. Some of the companies backed by Sutter Hill include: Network Appliance, Legato, Quantum, StorageTek, Data Domain, Alteon, Linear Technology, nVidia, and BroadVision. For more information about Sutter Hill Ventures, please visit www.shv.com.