Funding to support current growth rates and accelerate business expansion
EMERYVILLE, CA. January 6, 2010 – Lithium Technologies
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
Tenaya Capital
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
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
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
om&esheet=5981659&lan=en_US&anchor=www.emcap.com&index=9> .
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
