Collaborative software company Smartsheet raises $1.25M
Smartsheet, which offers tools for online business collaboration, has raised $1.25 million in a second round of funding.
The Bellevue, Wash. startup’s features include the ability to manage tasks, share files, and collaborate on documents. There are a lot of other product management products out there, such as Jive Software’s Clearspace, but we were hearing good things about Smartsheet back in 2007, and WebWorkerDaily’s Scott Blitstein sounds pretty impressed with the way the product integrates with email, allowing users to participate without logging in.
Pricing ranges from free to $60 a month, which makes Smartsheet affordable, even for small businesses that are cutting back. In his blog post announcing the investment, co-founder and chairman Brent Frei (who wrote a column for us about retro innovation) cites Salesforce.com as a company that capitalized on the last downturn. With the more affordable software-as-a-service business model, Salesforce is still reporting strong numbers, and it sounds like Frei hopes to see similar benefits for Smartsheet. In fact, he told TechFlash that the company signed up three times as many customers during the fourth quarter of 2008 as in the first three quarters combined. Smartsheet says it has 65,000 users in more than 30 countries.
Frei says the funding should support Smartsheet until 2010, when the company will hopefully hit profitability. Madrona Venture Group led the round, with participation from Frei himself. Smartsheet has raised a total of $5.56 million.
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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