Medallia Receives $50M in New Funding to Meet Growing Market Demand for Software that Makes Companies More Customer Centric

PALO ALTO, Calif., August 18, 2014 — Medallia® (medallia.com), the global leader in SaaS Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions, today announced an investment of $50M from Sequoia Capital. The new infusion of funds will accelerate the company’s fast growth. Since taking an initial investment from Sequoia two and a half years ago, Medallia has tripled its revenue and workforce, expanded its customer list to more than 500 brands, and completed key integrations, such as a recent one with Salesforce.

This rapid growth highlights a shift in the marketplace. Increasingly, customers make buying decisions based less on brands, which previously were a proxy for quality, and more on trusted information about a company’s actual customer experience. Such information is now widely available through online user reviews, expert opinions, and other easily accessible word of mouth, even about B2B companies.

“To survive in this new environment, companies must deliver customer experiences that match their brand promises,” said Medallia CEO Borge Hald. “They must listen and be accountable to their customers in real-time and in every part of their organizations, from the frontline to the C-suite, the way industry-disrupting newcomers, such as Amazon in retail, Uber in transportation, and Airbnb in hospitality, are. To compete in the future, companies need to build the voice of the customer into their operating DNA today. Medallia’s software lets companies do just that. That’s why we’re growing so fast.”

Sequoia is the sole investor in Medallia and its total investment is now $105M, one of the largest in its history. “In creating a new market and establishing itself as the leader, Medallia has already achieved what most enterprises hope to do but very few accomplish,” said Doug Leone, Sequoia partner and Medallia board member. “Their transformative impact on how the Fortune 1000 manages customer experience is a testament to their relentless user focus. We’re privileged to continue to work with them to build an enduring company.”

“We’re delighted to continue working with Sequoia,” said Medallia CEO Borge Hald. “Doug and Sequoia have been incredible partners, and we feel great about expanding our relationships with them.”

Medallia will use the proceeds of the latest funding round to:

• expand its SaaS platform to stay ahead of the exploding volume of customer feedback and customer information that’s available both within businesses and outside them in social media;
• enhance its text analytics engine to enable real-time root cause analysis of customer pain points;
• grow its offices in the US, Argentina, and the UK, as well as its recently opened divisions in Germany, France, Hong Kong, and Australia; and
• increase its cloud footprint to better accommodate its millions of business users across six continents and in 70 languages.

Medallia’s customers generate more than $3 trillion in combined annual revenue and include recognizable brands such as Shell, Marriott International, Nordstrom, Airbnb, The LEGO Group, and CA Technologies. These brands rely on Medallia to systematically embed the voice of the customer throughout their organizations to either remain among — or start to become among — the world’s most successful customer-centric businesses.