Mediafly Raises $25M To Help Companies Sell More

Mediafly secured a $25 million growth round as it looks to take on Highspot and Seismic in the sales-enablement arena.

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Investors in the round included Boathouse Capital providing equity and Sterling National Bank providing senior debt.

The Chicago-based company — whose customers include PepsiCo and Disney — helps companies create custom and interactive sales pitch decks and other presentations. Carson Conant, the company’s founder and CEO, said Mediafly’s interactive, animated content helps separate it from its sales-automation competitors.

“We focus on the sales part, not the automation,” Conant said.

COVID-19

In 2018, Mediafly pivoted from a concentration on sales-enablement automation to more of a focus on content, Conant said. That shift in focus started to pay off after the pandemic hit as companies were looking for better ways to engage with prospective buyers.

“I think (the pandemic) accelerated our market by two to three years,” Conant said.

According to Crunchbase data, global venture funding for sales automation has remained remarkably constant through the last few years, although it took a slight dip last year. In both 2018 and 2019, venture funding totaled approximately $1.1 billion, before a slight dip to $992 million last year.

Conant said he has witnessed strong investor interest in Mediafly for the last few years, even as there has been a lessening of companies in the market.

Mediafly — founded in 2006 as more of a media aggregation and podcast platform — does not offer growth or revenue figures, but the company now has more than 350 customers, many being large enterprises, Conant said. The 130-person company has raised more than $75 million in venture funding and debt, he added.

M&A

Part of the company’s shift to content came from a trio of acquisitions it made starting in 2018 and ending last October with the purchase of U.K.-based visual communication solution Presentify.

Conant said he does not anticipate using the current funds for more deals, but did not rule out future acquisitions.

“The next acquisitions would be bigger and require more money,” Conant said. “It’s absolutely something we want to do in the future.”

On the other end of the dealmaking front, Conant said Mediafly has received acquisition interest in the last 12 months, but the company has a “premium valuation” it puts on itself. Nevertheless, he said, large customer relationship management companies such as Salesforce1, SAP, Microsoft and SugarCRM, as well as sales outreach companies, all could look to add sales enablement and automation, and consolidation could start in about two years.

“We definitely see bigger players paying attention here,” Conant said.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.