Contentful Lands $80M In Series E

Startup Contentful has landed $80 million in a new round of funding, the company announced Wednesday.

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Contentful, which offers a headless content management system, has a valuation nearing $1 billion and saw its revenue roughly double every year for the past four years. The company helps organizations deliver content across channels more quickly than traditional content management systems.

Traditional content management systems are fairly siloed, according to Contentful’s new Chief Marketing Officer Bridget Perry. These systems were designed to bring content just to the web, not all the channels where people now see content–mobile devices, smart watches, etc. Contentful wants to drive the shift to the platform model, which helps companies integrate other tools and deliver content across channels and devices more quickly.

“In this moment of all the COVID crisis around the world, what’s become clear is that the digital experience for each brand isn’t the complementary experience, it’s the first experience,” CEO Steve Sloan said in an interview with Crunchbase News.

That makes sense. As people social distance and stay home, the most effective way for brands to reach customers is through digital channels.

The new funding will be used to help the company, which has hubs in Berlin and San Francisco, expand into new parts of the world, Sloan said. Although the company has customers around the world, it doesn’t have employees focused on areas like Latin America, Southeast Asia, or Japan. The funding will also be used to invest in product development, he said.

Sapphire Ventures led the Series E round, with participation from investors including General Catalyst and Salesforce Ventures. The company, which has raised $158 million so far, last raised $33.5 million in a Series D round led by Sapphire Ventures in December 2018. The startup counts Spotify, Urban Outfitters and Jack In The Box among its customers.

Disclosure: Salesforce Ventures, an investor in Contentful, is also an investor in Crunchbase, the parent company of Crunchbase News. Crunchbase’s investors are listed as part of its Crunchbase profile. For more about Crunchbase News’ editorial policies on disclosure, see the News team’s About page.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias