Merus Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by former M&A leaders at Google and Microsoft. Merus empowers ambitious teams building tomorrow’s industry-defining platforms. The firm partners with founders that possess unique industry and customer insights, an unwavering commitment to product innovation, and a relentless focus on execution.

Merus Capital

AngelPad is a seed-stage accelerator program that finds product market fit, defining a target market to get first validation for a company.  AngelPad is a startup Accelerator & MicroVC Fund, founded by Thomas Korte & Carine Magescas in 2010. AngelPad is consistently ranked [#1 U.S. Accelerator](https://angelpad.org/b/accelerator-rankings-2015/) by MIT/Rice University's Accelerator Rankings Project.

AngelPad

500 Global is a multi-stage venture capital firm with $2.4 billion in assets under management. The firm invests in founders who are building fast-growing technology companies. It focuses on markets where technology, innovation, and capital can generate long-term value and economic growth. 500 Global collaborates with key stakeholders and provides advisory services to governments on fostering entrepreneurial ecosystems to support startups. The firm has invested in over 5,000 founders and more than 2,800 companies across 80+ countries. It has funded over 35 companies valued at more than $1 billion and over 160 companies valued at over $100 million, including those that are private, public, or have exited. The team consists of over 190 members based in more than 25 countries, with experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and operators from leading technology companies.

500 Global

TSVC, formerly TEEC Angel Fund, is a deep technology-focused venture capital firm. The company prides itself on its empathy for strategic investments and partnerships. Part of what fulfills us about raising great companies is experiencing growing pains together and understanding the ups and downs of everyday startup life.  ‍ The company believes that today's visionaries will make tomorrow's reality. The company believes when companies choose to work with TSCV, they choose a team of veteran entrepreneurs with deep technology backgrounds and investment experience. TSCV believes that globalization will be more important in an interconnected world than ever, and it stands at the forefront of that transformation. TSCV turns dream ventures into reality and thrives as it works toward the common goal of making the world a better place through technology.

TSVC

645 Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders who are building iconic companies. We invest at the Seed and Series A stages and leverage our Voyager software platform to enable our Success team and Connected Network to help founders scale to the growth stage. Select portfolio companies that have reached the growth stage include Iterable, Goldbelly, Resident, Eden Health, FiscalNote, and Squire. We invest in four main areas: SaaS for the Second Wave, Citizen Professionals, The Engineering Value Chain Revolution, and Personalized Consumer Applications. You can read more here: https://645ventures.com/themes/ 645 Ventures has $200m+ in AUM and is growing fast with backing from leading institutional investors, including university endowments, funds of funds, and pension funds.  We have over 35 active companies in our portfolio in the areas of enterprise SaaS, infrastructure software, and consumer technology. Several of our portfolio companies have been acquired by Google, Facebook, Expedia, and private equity firms.

645 Ventures

Index Ventures is a venture capital firm which helps entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.

Index Ventures

CRV has been an investor in technology companies for almost half a century. The firm has backed nearly 400 startups in its 47-year history, including foundational companies like Twitter, Zendesk, Amgen, Hubspot, Parametric Technologies, Yammer, EqualLogic, and Sonus Networks. Half of the companies CRV has backed have gone public or been acquired. The firm focuses on enterprise, consumer, and deep-insight bioengineering.

Harmony Partners is a highly differentiated venture capital firm that makes expansion stage investments in high growth software, internet and tech-enabled companies. By eliminating the typical deal constraints of traditional growth equity firms around minimum check sizes and ownership percentages, Harmony fills a gap in the market. Founded in New York City in 2010 and investing globally, our team has deployed more than $1 billion in over 100 technology companies over the past 25 years, including Anaplan, AppDynamics, Alation, Arctic Wolf, E*Trade, Iterable, Klaviyo, Maven Clinic, Natera, Postmates, Priceline, SS&C, Swiggy and UiPath. To learn more, please visit www.harmonyvp.com.

Harmony Partners

Blue Cloud Ventures (BCV) is a software-focused growth equity venture capital firm based in New York City.  The fund targets investments in leading SaaS, infrastructure and open source software companies. BCV offers entrepreneurs an alternative to raising a traditional growth round by being flexible on amount invested, ownership requirements, board representation and exit horizon. BCV supports entrepreneurs in raising the optimal growth round and enables early-stage investors to double down on their most promising companies.

Blue Cloud Ventures

Stereo Capital is a growth-stage fund focused on sales efficient and data-driven technology companies. It invests in data-generating businesses. They believe there is no greater driver of business success than quick, quantifiable feedback.  The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Palo Alto, California.

Stereo Capital

Viking Global Investors is an investment firm that uses fundamental analysis to select investments across industries and geographies. It is a global investment firm managing more than twenty billion in capital across long-short equity and long-only strategies. The firm was established in 1999 and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, with offices in New York City, Hong Kong, and London.

Viking Global Investors

Adams Street Partners is a global private market investment management firm that offers comprehensive solutions for its investors. As one of the independent, employee-owned firms, Adams Street has established a reputation for strong performance, an extensive knowledge base, and a disciplined investment approach that values quality over quantity. For more than 45 years, Adams Street has gained the experience to successfully manage through some of the most challenging investment cycles. The collective knowledge of the Adams Street team works collaboratively to leverage the global resources of the Firm in navigating the complexities of private markets. Its mission as a premier private markets investment manager is to provide world-class investment performance and maintain the confidence of our investors through our deep understanding of the global private marketplace and deliver exemplary client service.

Adams Street Partners

Glynn Capital Management focuses on investing in leading private and public technology growth companies. Glynn Capital Management seeks to be long-term investors in a limited number of excellent companies with management teams, sustainable business models, and long-term growth potential.

Glynn Capital Management

Silver Lake is a global technology investment firm focused solely on making large-scale investments in leading technology companies.

Silver Lake

Delta-v Capital provides liquidity solutions and growth equity to private technology companies and their shareholders. Founded in 2009, focusing on providing secondary liquidity to minority investors, the firm has since expanded its scope to include growth equity to support growth-stage technology companies. Delta-v manages over $500 million in capital commitments and targets between $3 and $30 million in investments in technology sectors, including enterprise software, information services, cybersecurity, data analytics, cloud, and communications infrastructure. Delta-v has offices in Boulder, CO, and Dallas, TX. For more information about Delta-v Capital, visit deltavcapital.com.

Delta-v Capital

DTCP is an investment management firm focused on growth equity and digital infrastructure. Founded in 2015, the firm has raised more than $1 billion in funds from corporate and institutional investors and invested in over 60 companies. DTCP Growth invests in enterprise application and infrastructure software companies. DTCP Infra invests in mobile access, fiber, and data center infrastructure.

DTCP

Capital One Ventures is a strategic investor, funding startups that are driving the future of data, technology, and financial services. Founded in 2014, Capital One Ventures has invested in more than 70 companies that help deliver superior experiences to consumers and businesses. Capital One Ventures is based in San Francisco, New York and at Capital One's headquarters outside of Washington, DC.

Capital One Ventures

Iterable

Iterable is the top rated AI-powered customer communication platform that helps organizations like Redfin, Priceline, Calm, and Box to activate customers with joyful interactions at scale. With Iterable, organizations drive high growth with individualized, harmonized and dynamic communications that engage customers throughout the entire lifecycle at the right time.

Iterable is a marketing automation platform that enables its customers to plan and execute marketing campaigns across a wide range of channels including email, direct mail, mobile, and social media. Iterable’s platform also offers analytical tools allowing a variety of data sources to be unified and gathered within its platform.&nbsp;

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

Iterable Debuts Winter Product Release with AI Tools to Optimize Frequency, Loyalty, and Campaign Performance

Amazon Web Services

To enhance customer engagement, Iterable expanded its AWS partnership with four key developments: Smart Ingest for seamless Redshift data activation, AI-powered innovations through Amazon Bedrock, simplified access via AWS Marketplace, and improved email deliverability using AWS SES.

Startups providing tools to automate the execution of marketing campaigns across varied channels.

To enhance marketing ROI, AI innovation, and procurement efficiency, while improving email deliverability and driving value creation in the marketing industry through advanced technologies.

Iterable is a marketing automation platform that enables its customers to plan and execute marketing campaigns across a wide range of channels including email, direct mail, mobile, and social media. Iterable’s platform also offers analytical tools allowing a variety of data sources to be unified and gathered within its platform.&nbsp;Iterable’s platform also offers AI capabilities with “Iterable AI,” which uses machine learning and data science models to optimize marketing campaigns and engage with customers. The company has also joined with a number of technology partners to extend the capabilities of the platform. These include providing location-based messaging (Foursquare) and customer loyalty and reward campaigns (Talon.one).Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of June 2022, the firm's platform was used by 1000+ customers including many well-known brands, such as Zillow, SeatGeek, Bombas, and Boxed, from a variety of industries.

Outbrain is an algorithm-based content recommendation and discovery platform that curates native advertising content from the open web, providing personalized content for brands to increase customer engagement. Outbrain also allows content publishers to amplify its reach by supplying content to the platform. As of September 2023, customers could access 7,000+ online content sources including content by the Washington Post, Guardian, and BBC.&nbsp;Outbrain has been a pioneer in the content recommendation space and was the first to introduce an algorithm-based content recommendation in 2008. It was also the first to introduce a self-service platform for content recommendation in 2012. In May 2021, it tested “QualityRatings,” a tool that implements quality guidelines for the content featured on its platform while using machine learning and AI to create a more personalized user experience. In September 2022, the firm launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13122">Keystone</a>, a business optimization solution for publishers.&nbsp;Outbrain has made a series of acquisitions over the years while making enhancements to its product offerings. In November 2021, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6992">Outbrain acquired vi</a>, a contextual video intelligence platform for USD 55 million to grow its CTV and other display ads offerings. In August 2024, Outbrain acquired <a href="https://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/outbrain-acquires-teads-from-altice-for-1-billion/">Teads</a>, an SSP and video monetization company, to create an "end-to-end, full-funnel platform" by expanding into TV, video, and CTV advertising.&nbsp; Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;Outbrain’s customers include leading news media outlets such as CNN, MSN, and Sky News, serving more than a billion monthly users (by December 2022).&nbsp;&nbsp;In April 2022, Outbrain’s platform was <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9907">integrated with ID5</a> to provide a privacy-first customer identification solution.

Outbrain

Marin Software is an adTech firm offering a suite of solutions for brands looking to conduct search, social media, and ecommerce advertising. The firm’s “MarineOne” solution enables Brands to integrate their data under a single platform; coupled with machine learning tools, marketers can optimize ad spending across multiple platforms. In the case of search and social media advertising, Brands can increase their visibility across a number of search engines and social media platforms including Google, Facebook, and Apple Search Ads.&nbsp;In recent years the firm has been making enhancements to transform its Marine One Software as a complete marketing campaign management &amp; intelligence solution. In line with the firm expanded its ecommerce advertising solution capabilities by increasing the number of integrations to include Criteo’s commerce media platform and Instacart’s advertising platform. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12159">2022</a>, the firm rolled out a number of new product and features including 1) MarinOne bidding, the firm's ad bidding marketplace, 2) MarinOne support, to enable advertisers to improve ad performance with multi-edit ad scheduling solutions, 3) social rules engine, to help automate workflows, and 4) <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15019">Budget Optimizer</a>, an ad budget management solution. More recently, in April 2023, the firm introduced an automation tool <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17565">“MarinOne Scripts,”</a> which integrates Python scripting with its MarineOne platform, providing marketers with customized and data-driven solutions to optimize campaigns.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2021, several brands from varied industries, including Nissan, American Eagle outfitters, and Harmony, use the firm’s solutions.In 2021, the firm made a number of new initiatives in 2021, including an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7635">integration with Amazon Ads</a> and a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6973">partnership with CitrusAd </a>to expand the ecommerce capabilities of its platform. In January 2023, the company announced an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16172">integration with Yahoo</a> to broaden access to programmatic ad content.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Marin Software

Founded in China, Terminus claims to have the first account-based marketing (ABM) platform that unifies the marketing and sales teams’ roles under a single platform. Terminus specializes in B2B marketing and, according to the firm, its “Terminus Data Studio” has one of the largest B2B account databases, which by September 2021, covered more than 70 million businesses. Terminus’s customer data platform (CDP) is fully integrated with its marketing automation platform, through which teams can run multi-channel targeted campaigns across many channels including email, ad networks, live chat, and the web. This can then be analyzed with Terminus’ suite of analytics and attribution tools. By September 2021, Terminus served more than 1,000 customers, including Salesloft, Foundry, and Quantum Workplace.According to a study done by Forrester (in Q2 2020), Terminus has been recognized among the ABM platform leaders.Through a series of acquisitions, Terminus has transformed into a marketing cloud platform offering a range of services. Its two latest acquisitions took place within 12 months. In November 2020, it acquired Growflare, a lead generation and account-based intelligence platform catering to B2B startups, followed by B2B CDP Zylotech in September 2021. Terminus hoped to capitalize on these to build the most comprehensive ABM platform on the market.

Terminus

Founded in France, Brevo <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18241">(formerly Sendinblue)</a> began as an email marketing automation platform catering to small and medium-scale businesses (SMB). It has since extended its services to become an all-in-one marketing platform; the range of services found on Brevo's platform include email and SMS marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, landing page creation, and Facebook ad management, among others. In November 2022, the firm launched an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14388">integrated meetings solution</a> that brings together scheduling, video conferencing, and payment solutions. In March 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17462">unveiled “Conversations”</a> to manage customer conversations across messaging channels in one centralized location.Brevo’s platform is compared with other well-known competitors such as Mailchimp and Hubspot and is commended for its live support and fair pricing, making it a strong contender in the SMB space.&nbsp;The company has expanded its product offering through a series of acquisitions during 2021-2022. Brevo acquired three firms in September 2021 for USD 47 million: 1) Metrilo, a provider of customer analytics and marketing services for ecommerce stores, 2) Chatra, a live chat messenger app for increasing online sales, and 3) PushOwl, a customer re-engagement website that uses web-based push notifications. In March 2022, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9009">acquired MeetFox</a>, a meeting scheduling and video conferencing platform. In September 2022, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13360">acquired Yodel.io,</a> an Austrian cloud-based phone system provider, to enable additional customer touchpoints, and reduce the overall digital marketing spend for SMBs. More recently, in February 2023, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16271?industryIds=62">acquired Captain Wallet,</a> a mobile wallet marketing platform, to broaden its reach internationally. In December 2023, Brevo acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24833">WonderPush and Octolis,</a> two customer interaction platforms, to expand its CRM capabilities.&nbsp;&nbsp;The firm achieved <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15834">USD 100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)</a> at the end of 2022 while maintaining a positive EBITDA position.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;The platform catered to 500,000+ customers across 180 countries as of end December 2022.

Brevo

Acquia provides a digital experience platform (DXP) to support medium to large enterprises that use Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS) that provides the back-end infrastructure for websites and by September 2021, powered approximately 2.1% of websites on the internet. The core product offered by Acquia is a marketing cloud that provides a full suite of services to manage the customer journey. The platform features a customer data platform (CDP), unifying data across multiple sources; sales automation tools to deliver personalized marketing campaigns across multiple delivery channels; marketing campaign management tools to manage distributed marketing teams; and a content management platform to organize and monitor content.&nbsp;Having been built on the Drupal framework, which does not require any programming skills to implement, Acquia’s marketing cloud claims to be more accessible and agile than enterprise cloud solutions provided by incumbents such as Adobe and Oracle. In 2021, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report named Acquia a leader in DXP platforms, while a study done by Forrester (in July 2021) found that customers of Acquia’s DXP solutions experienced a payback on their investment in less than six months, generating an average return on investment (ROI) of 589% over three years.&nbsp;Acquia has made several investments and enhancements to its DXP platform. In January 2021, Acquia, in partnership with Commercetools and Lucidworks, launched “Acquia Digital Commerce,” a service for creating personalized digital shopping experiences for customers. The firm has also added a number of self-serve features to its CDP such as&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11422">“right to erasure”</a> to bolster the privacy and security features of its platform to cater to enterprise users. In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35334">October 2024,</a> Acquia added AI capabilities to digital asset management solutions to accelerate campaign delivery.&nbsp;In September 2021, Acquia acquired Widen Enterprises, a digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) software company, for an undisclosed amount. As a result, customers can have a fully integrated experience on the platform, while the acquisition also added a further 700+ customers. In November 2023, the company acquired Monsido, a website accessibility and optimization solution from CivicPlus, to expand its platform capabilities.&nbsp;In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36365">November 2024,&nbsp;</a>Acquia acquired Monsid to expand Acquia's digital experience platform capabilities.Key customers and partnershipsBy September 2021, Acquia counted one in four Fortune 500 companies, including Johnson &amp; Johnson, Bayer, and Xerox, among its customers.&nbsp;As of September 2024, the company served more than 4,000 customers globally.&nbsp;In June 2022, Acquia&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11352">partnered with Workato</a> (enterprise-level workflow automation platform) to integrate with Acquia’s CDP to expand enterprise use of the platform. The integration added 100+ technology integrations compatible with Acquia’s marketing cloud.&nbsp;

Acquia

Firms positioned as an 'all-in-one' marketing platform,  providing a variety of functions across the MarTech stack

Startups providing platforms for planning and managing marketing campaigns.

Startups offering tools for finding and attracting potential customers with targeted ads.

Startups providing tools for gathering, cleaning, and enhancing customer data to provide deep analytics. This also includes firms offering account-based marketing (ABM) solutions to drive targeted and personalized campaigns.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for marketing

Personalization tools are mainly used in AdTech and marketing campaign automation

Marketing automation provides measurement and attribution solutions to measure marketing effectiveness

Uses GenAI to automate content creation  and personalize content for marketing campaigns

Uses AI/ML to enable marketing automation, making it a core part of many companies' products

Metaverse advertising is being explored by AdTech segments for in-game advertising

The in-game advertising segment is in development and has a niche relevance to this area

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 Iterable, a marketing automation platform, has introduced its Winter Product Release which incorporates new AI capabilities aimed at helping marketers. The tools included in this update are AI-powered Frequency Optimization, Brand Affinity Insights, and Journey Performance Recommendations, all designed to enhance customer engagement and campaign performance.
 The update consists of three main elements: AI-powered Frequency Optimization that modifies message frequency across various channels like email, push, and SMS; Brand Affinity Insights, that examines customer sentiment and loyalty trends; and Journey Performance Recommendations, which identifies areas of improvement and offers optimization advice for customer journeys.
 The new features aim to prevent an overload of messages, reduce unsubscribe rates, enhance the tracking of customer loyalty, and assure the timely delivery of messages, says Iterable.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The Winter Product Release builds upon Iterable's expanded partnership with AWS announced in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/35465"> October 2024 </a> to enhance Iterable's AI capabilities, which utilize Amazon Bedrock for advanced pre-trained models. The new AI features in the Winter Release, such as AI-powered Frequency Optimization and Brand Affinity Insights, likely benefit from this collaboration with AWS.

Iterable

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