Company Announces 167% Revenue Growth, Veteran Executive Hires and Promotion of Allison Pickens to Chief Customer Officer
OAKLAND, CA – May 9, 2017 – Gainsight™, the Customer Success company announced today that it has closed a $52 million Series E round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. In addition to participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Summit Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, Cisco Investments also participated in the round. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the expansion of Customer Success into new global markets, industries and channels. As part of the investment, Rowan Trollope, SVP & GM, Internet of Things (IoT) and Applications Division at Cisco will become an observer to Gainsight’s board of directors.
Gainsight also revealed it logged 167% year-over-year revenue growth in the last fiscal year, now boasts over 430 employees across seven global offices and has added new customers across industries. These include enterprise technology (Gigamon, SecureWorks and VMware), SaaS (ABC Financial), and healthcare (MCG Health, naviHealth and Resmed Brightree). The company made these announcements today as over 4,000 members of the Customer Success community gather in Oakland, CA at Pulse 2017, the industry conference of record for Customer Success.
“The most progressive companies in the world view their customers as foundational to long-term success, just as much as their products and employees, and operationalizing their Customer Success discipline has become a cornerstone of the executive agendas at companies of all sizes and industries,” said Nick Mehta, Chief Executive Officer at Gainsight and Co-Author of Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. “We are fortunate at Gainsight to expand our partnership with Lightspeed Venture Partners to help fuel our momentum, while together with our customers, we define strategy for a brand new profession in Customer Success.”
“Regardless of size, industry and geography, businesses do well when their customers feel happy and successful from the engagement. Accordingly, Customer Success is at the heart of every conversation between a vendor and a customer,” said Nakul Mandan, Investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “Gainsight has led the charge in taking Customer Success from an emerging software category to a movement that is now taking every company by storm. It is the category defining company in the space, and we are thrilled to double down on our partnership with Nick and his team.”
“We’re excited to become an investor in a company that shares our vision of helping organizations become more proactive about customer care,” said Rowan Trollope, SVP/GM of Cisco’s IoT and Applications Business. “Within our internal customer success teams, we’ve seen how Gainsight’s technology has given us additional visibility into the health and satisfaction of our own customers. This investment gives us an opportunity to support Gainsight’s growth and continued industry leadership.”
Mandan, who led the new funding round, has now officially made three separate investments in Gainsight. Mandan joined Lightspeed in 2014 after spending five years at Battery Ventures where he was part of the original team which led the Series A investment in Gainsight in April 2013. Mandan invested again in 2014, this time as part of Lightspeed Venture Partners, in the company’s $25 million Series C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. This commitment to Gainsight speaks to Mandan’s confidence in the Customer Success discipline as foundational to the viability of the recurring revenue business model, and an assertive belief in Gainsight as the frontrunner for this exciting new industry.
Gainsight Reports 167% Revenue Growth in Last Fiscal Year
Gainsight’s recent revenue growth bolsters a total enterprise-customer roster representing over $2.23 trillion of market cap. This momentum demonstrates that Customer Success has become a top-down initiative at leading enterprises from all industries and verticals as a core driver of revenue growth in the outcome economy. Many of the world’s leading recurring revenue businesses have chosen Gainsight to operationalize their Customer Success strategy — including new customers announced today such as ABC Financial, Resmed Brightree, Gigamon, MCG Health, naviHealth and VMware.
“Our mission in VMware Customer Success is to help customers drive business outcomes and grow market share with exponential customer satisfaction,” said Alaa Badr, Vice President, Customer Success at VMware. “We are proud to partner with Gainsight not just as a ‘point-in-time’ platform, but rather, a system that the enterprise will adopt as the tip of the spear for the Customer Success community at VMware.”
“Brightree is excited to partner with Gainsight to leverage data in order to deliver actionable information to our account management and support teams,” said Matt Mellott, Chief Executive Officer at Brightree. “Through these programs, Brightree can proactively monitor the health of our customers’ businesses as part of a collaborative partnership focused on their success.”
“Over 8,000 health clubs throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico depend on ABC Financial to help them run their businesses every day,” said Mike Escobedo, SVP Client Management at ABC Financial. “Our company is based on customer trust, industry experience and knowledge, and relationships. We feel that partnering with Gainsight will enhance our abilities to better provide those core objectives to our customers, now and in the future.”
In addition to Gainsight’s traction in selling to large enterprise, the company now recognizes over 50% of public cloud companies (see Bessemer Venture Partners Cloud Index) as customers. This trend highlights that Customer Success is both a business transformation for large organizations moving to a recurring revenue business model, as well as a foundational business imperative for companies born in the cloud.
Gainsight Hires Key Executives to Prepare for Next Stage of Growth
Gainsight also announced today the addition of several key hires as an expansion of the company’s executive leadership team. Igor Beckerman has joined the company as Chief Financial Officer, Jason Stewart as Chief Revenue Officer, Ryan Toben as Vice President of Revenue Operations, and Mike Berger as Vice President of Product Marketing.
Igor Beckerman is newly appointed as charter Chief Financial Officer at Gainsight. Beckerman joins the company from Marketo where he served most recently as Vice President of Finance. He joined Marketo in 2011 and served through the IPO and the eventual acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2016. As Chief Financial Officer, Beckerman will be responsible for global financial reporting and compliance, financial planning and analysis, and driving continuous process and system improvements to support the company’s growing operations. Beckerman will report to Nick Mehta, Chief Executive Officer.
Jason Stewart is newly appointed as charter Chief Revenue Officer at Gainsight. Stewart joins the company from Apptio where he served most recently as Vice President of Americas and where his teams contributions helped lead to Apptio’s IPO in late 2016. Prior to his time at Apptio, Stewart held various sales leadership positions at Opsware, Hewlett Packard and Parametric Technology Corporation.
Ryan Toben was also announced today as Gainsight’s Vice President of Revenue Operations. Toben joins the company from Mixpanel, where he led strategy and operations for Sales, Marketing and Customer teams. Prior to his time at Mixpanel, Toben was an executive at Successfactors, leading commercial strategy and sales operations for the company through their landmark acquisition by SAP at $3.4B. As Vice President of Revenue Operations, Toben will focus on driving operational performance and revenue growth from Sales, Marketing and Business Development.
Mike Berger was also announced today as Gainsight’s Vice President of Product Marketing. Like Beckerman, Berger also joins the company from Marketo where he led product marketing efforts across Marketo’s core products from 2012 through the IPO and eventual acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2016. As Vice President of Product Marketing, Berger will be responsible for the company’s go-to-market campaigns, product launches and marketing programs across key personas and vertical industries.
Allison Pickens Appointed as Gainsight’s Chief Customer Officer
Gainsight announced today the promotion of Allison Pickens to Chief Customer Officer. Pickens has been at the company for three years and is widely recognized as a thought leader in the Customer Success industry.
“I couldn’t be more proud to announce Allison’s promotion, a deserving recognition for the invaluable work that she’s done for both Gainsight as well as the countless organizations that she’s influenced in the Customer Success industry,” said Nick Mehta, Chief Executive Officer at Gainsight. “Allison is one of those rare talents who brings her sharp operational excellence and strategic thinking to all aspects of our business, but especially the post-sales organization — we’re lucky to have her on our team.”
Pickens joined Gainsight in January 2014 as Chief of Staff and quickly advanced to leading Business Development, Operations, and Customer Success. She has been running all post-sales functions, including Customer Success, Services, Support, Customer Marketing, and Operations. Widely regarded as a thought leader in Customer Success, Pickens has built Gainsight’s best practices for Customer Success both with her team and through her work with clients over the last three years. Pickens has scaled and unified Gainsight’s post-sales organization to create a holistic customer experience, and through that experience, shares her insights with other companies building high-performing Customer Success practices within their organizations. She is a sought-after speaker and has a highly trafficked blog on Customer Success.
Upon joining Gainsight, Pickens brought a wealth of experience working with enterprise companies during her time at Boston Consulting Group, where she developed business transformation strategies with Fortune 500 companies, a skill she now brings to her work at Gainsight in operationalizing Customer Success with her clients. Distinctive to her approach is her background in investing, having spent two years working in Private Equity at Bain Capital. Pickens was named one of “50 People You Should Know In Sales and Business Development” by TradeCraft.
For More Information:
- Learn more about the Gainsight platform: https://www.gainsight.com/customer-success-products/
- Read more about Gainsight’s customers: https://www.gainsight.com/customers/
- Join Gainsight’s growing team: https://www.gainsight.com/company/
About Lightspeed Venture Partners
Lightspeed Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 300 companies globally, including Snapchat, The Honest Company, Nest, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, GrubHub, and TaskRabbit. The Firm currently manages over $4 billion of committed capital and invests in the U.S. and internationally, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India and China. www.lsvp.com
About Gainsight
Gainsight™, the Customer Success company, helps businesses grow faster by reducing churn, increasing upsell, and driving customer advocacy. Gainsight’s product helps you touch customers effectively, track customer health consistently and transform the way your company orients around the customer. Gainsight provides a 360° view of customers and drives retention across Customer Success, sales, marketing, executive and product management. Learn how leading companies like Adobe, Box, DocuSign, Micro Focus, Marketo and Workday use Gainsight to help their customers succeed at www.gainsight.com.
Connect with Gainsight:
Blog: www.gainsight.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/GainsightHQ
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Gainsight
