Marketing verification startup SheerID just raised $64 million of fresh funding in a round led by CVC Growth Partners with participation from existing investors Centana Growth Partners and Seattle firm Voyager Capital.
Portland, Ore.-based SheerID helps consumer brands run special deals for students, teachers and the military. It now has more than 200 customers, including Target, Amazon, Google, and T-Mobile. Revenue has spiked 450 percent over the past three years.
“Marketers are struggling to capture the attention of consumers who want more control over their personal data and less uninvited marketing from brands,” SheerID CEO Jake Weatherly said in a statement. “Our platform allows brands to create offers that honor and recognize an entire consumer tribe, increasing trust and word-of-mouth, and decreasing customer acquisition costs.”
The ability to verify specific populations is helpful to marketers who are going after hard-to-reach groups such as college students. Comcast used SheerID to target Gen Z customers for its streaming offerings.
SheerID collects information from participating organizations like universities and branches of the military in order to confirm whether a shopper qualifies for the deals. The startup operates a software-as-a-service platform hosted on Amazon Web Services that integrates into the sign-up process on customers’ own sites.
“SheerID’s track record and growth has been very impressive, and the company stands to benefit from powerful secular trends across privacy regulation, personalization, and eCommerce,” CVC Growth’s Doug Behrman said in a statement.
The startup plans to use the cash to invest in marketing, sales, and engineering. Behrman and Jason Glass, also from CVC Growth, will join the company’s board of directors.
SheerID employs 120 people and has raised $93 million since it was founded in 2011.
Weatherly co-founded the company with SheerID president David Shear. In February, the startup hired CFO Simon Pius, who was previously CFO of cloud security firm CipherCloud and application software company xMatters.
“Since leading SheerID’s $5.5 million Series A round four years ago, Voyager recognized the significant role SheerID could play in authenticating experiences for the world’s largest brands,” Voyager Capital Managing Director Erik Benson said in a statement. “We are thrilled to be partnering with world class founders Jake Weatherly and David Shear in helping build them build a company of lasting value.”
SheerID is among the first investments from CVC’s new tech-focused $1.6 billion growth fund, which was announced today.
