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Lytics, marketing data startup, raises $7 million as second wave emerges in Portland's tech revival [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.](Oregonian (Portland, OR) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 22--Portland digital-marketing startup Lytics disclosed $7 million in venture backing Wednesday and plans to put the money to work immediately. "We want to be the market leaders and to do that right you need to have critical mass," said James McDermott, the company's co-founder and chief executive. The investment, large by Oregon standards, positions the two-year-old company among the best-funded of a second generation of young businesses leading Portland's ongoing tech renaissance. Oregon tech emerged from nearly a decade of slumber about five years ago with a burst of promising young companies -- Urban Airship, Puppet Labs, Elemental Technologies, Simple, Janrain, Jama Software and Act-On Software -- that attracted big venture rounds and revived the state's dormant entrepreneurial sector. Most of those businesses continue to grow, but a second wave of young companies has been slow to emerge as once-promising businesses drifted away or were sold. That may be changing. Oregon venture investment is up 12 percent over the last year, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association, and Lytics is among a handful of companies to raise substantial early-stage funding in recent weeks. Earlier this month, for example, Opal Labs raised $8 million for its tools to help plan online marketing campaigns. Also Wednesday, Lytics is formally launching its online tools to help consumer marketers analyze and understand their customer data. It's developing digital tools analogous to those that Salesforce and others offer to marketers focused on business customers. "Most marketers want to get ahead of the deal and they want to figure out how to take advantage of data," McDermott said. "They've sort of hit this brick wall, which is: We don't know enough about our consumers to respond to their needs." The goal is to enable marketers to spend their money more effectively, cutting promotional costs while producing better results. Wednesday's funding comes from Comcast Ventures, the cable TV company's venture arm. Lytics said the New York-based firm has expertise in marketing technology and an interest in shaking up digital marketing. Other investors include Rembrandt Venture Partners and Voyager Capital, each of whom also participated in a $2.2 million round 14 months ago. At the time, Lytics had a half-dozen employees and aimed to double in the next year. It quadrupled instead and now employs two dozen in the Portland Development Commissions' building in Old Town. So Lytics is moving to bigger, unspecified offices in the Pearl District (it's still negotiating details of the move) and plans to add at least another 10 employees in the coming months. With the new investment and broad availability for its tools, McDermott said the company wants to attract "thousands of customers" and scale up relatively fast. Lytics has drawn its team of engineers and data scientists from a growing ecosystem of Portland tech companies, including Cozy and Urban Airship. McDermott and other executives are alumni of Portland online marketing analyst Webtrends. Last week Kevin Bobowski, another Webtrends alum who left Portland in 2007, returned to the city as Lytics vice president of marketing. After executive stints elsewhere, including time at ExactTarget and Offerpop, Bobowski said he finds Portland's tech scene has matured considerably. It's now practical, he said, for an ambitious company to grow here: "The tech environment has changed so much from what I remember seven years ago." -- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699 ___ (c)2014 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Visit The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) at www.oregonian.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |