Talkoot, a Portland-based startup that helps e-commerce companies create and manage website content, raised $1.65 million dollars in a round led by Seven Peaks Ventures.
Talkoot’s niche is helping major brands to create, manage and translate the thousands of product descriptions and other content scattered across their websites. Current customers include Adidas, Mountain Hardwear, Dr. Martens, Burton Snowboards and Under Armour.
“We went looking for a solution for our own needs producing high volume, high-quality product content for global brands,” Talkroot CEO and co-founder Brian Hennessy said in an email. “What we found were a lot of dark, windowless product databases that had none of the collaboration, workflow and functionality we needed.”
For a company such as Adidas, which currently lists around 7,600 products on its U.S. online store, the task of coordinating all of those descriptions can be daunting. Talkroot’s platform aims to make it easier and faster for marketing teams to collaborate.
Talkroot, whose name is Finnish for “a gathering of friends and neighbors to accomplish a task,” is sold to companies as a software-as-a-service product. It’s designed to integrate with a company’s other enterprise resource planning and content management platforms.
The startup competes with other content management and product information systems that have built-in collaboration features, as well as broader collaboration tools, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Smartsheet.
Hennessy started the company alongside Jason Buffington, Brad Coulon and Derwyn Harris. Harris also co-founded Jama Software, a Portland-based product development platform used by SpaceX and Qualcomm that raised $200 million last year. Coulon and Buffington also work together at software firm On Demand Analysis.
This was the first time Talkoot sought outside funding, with earlier financing coming from the founders. Talkoot has nine employees and plans to expand its team, with a focus on hiring sales and development professionals.
Bend, Ore.-based Seven Peaks was joined by fellow Pacific Northwest VC firms Cascade Angels and Willamette Valley Capital. Last year, Seven Peaks Ventures started a $28 million fund to invest in 20-to-25 early-stage startups across Pacific Northwest.
