Accelo Raises $2 Million Funding Round

We are excited to announce that we recently closed a $2 million funding round to further accelerate client growth and product innovation. Led by Blackbird Ventures with Rothenberg Ventures and a number of professional services industry leaders also participating, this round adds both capital and a great roster of investors to help us take the business to the next level.

With millions in recurring revenue and thousands of clients all over the world, folks who follow the startup and fundraising scene might be wondering why we chose to raise what is a relatively small round of funding. In short, we raised this smaller round because our organic growth was already tracking so well we didn't need to sell more of the company now to achieve our next growth milestones - this round is really about bringing on board great people who can help in much more significant ways than with their checkbooks, and ensures we can stay disciplined and focused on our clients and the market.

The investors in this round include:

Blackbird Ventures -  Blackbird is Australia's leading VC fund, with recent investments in Canva, Autopilot, Bugcrowd and Shoes of Prey, among others. With investors including the founders of Atlassian and numerous other accomplished entrepreneurs, Blackbird loves SaaS businesses that solve real problems and was won over by our traction and ability to get so far with such an ambitious product as a bootstrapped company. Blackbird partner Bill Bartee has joined the Accelo board. 

Rothenberg Ventures - based in San Francisco, Rothenberg is a new type of early-stage VC fund, having backed companies such as Luxe, Zenpayroll and Customer.io. Founder Mike Rothenberg has an extensive network from his time at Stanford (where he ran the world-renowned Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders program), and the team at Rothenberg are growing strongly too.

Damien Tampling - the largest private investor in our round, Damien holds the record for the youngest partner ever appointed at Deloitte (globally). He currently heads Deloitte's Digital Strategy and Investment team, and is a member of the firm's Strategy Executive. As someone who's been in both professional services and digital for almost 20 years, Damien immediately got what we're doing and the size of the opportunity and asked to come in on the round the day after being introduced to the company and opportunity.

Ben Gumbiner - as Senior Vice President at Universal McCann (a massive media agency with clients like Sony and Coca-Cola), Ben is responsible for technology investment strategy and guidance across the business globally. As someone with a close eye on the agency industry and technology, he loves what we're doing and sees firsthand the potential of improving the way the industry is run.

Dave Burlington - a seasoned operator, Dave has been part of the team to take two companies public: Taleo and Epocrates. Prior to that, Dave held senior roles at Peoplesoft and Commergent Technologies, and today he is a partner at Armanino, the largest independent consulting and accounting practice in California. Dave loved the tenacity of the Accelo team and as a consultant working with dozens of professional service businesses (and a partner in one) he understands the pain we're solving (and how widespread it is) first-hand.

Sandy Kory - a prolific early stage investor, Sandy was one of our first private investors to come in on our round. Sandy has previously invested in successful startups like Palantir, Sprig and more recently Chariot, and has a strong background in corporate M&A.

Steve Outtrim - founder of Sausage Software, Steve was one of the original dot-com success stories. He was the developer of the HotDog HTML editor back in 1995, and by 1997, it was the third most popular piece of software on the internet (after Netscape and Eudora), making him Australia's first dot-com millionaire.

Click here to see the press release, and to get in touch please email: [email protected].