imgres-2SpreadFast, a maker of social marketing software, announced today that it has raised $18 million in venture capital.
OpenView Venture Partners led the round with additional investment from Austin Ventures and InterWest Partners.
The Austin-based startup plans to use the money to hire employees and further develop its product.
“For the past few years we have been tracking the social media management space and believe the market is at an inflection point. Companies are no longer concerned with Likes, but rather with building real customer engagement and value across their social networks,” Adam Marcus, Managing Director at OpenView Venture Partners, said in a news release. “We believe Spredfast has built the only true enterprise-class product to help the Fortune 1000 manage this incredibly important channel. We couldn’t be happier to partner with this tremendous team to build a category-defining company.”
Spredfast’s customers include AT&T, Caterpillar, Rackspace, Starbucks, AAA, T. Rowe Price, Whole Food Market and Warner Brothers.
The company recently integrated Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews into its platform for easy social amplification of authentic word-of-mouth.
“Social is rapidly becoming the preferred interaction mechanism for consumers and business people alike. The time is fast approaching when your customers will no longer email or call you — they will send out a signal via social and expect a thoughtful response. They’ll expect you to know about them and for you to offer them something of value for their attention,” Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast said in a news release. “Spredfast’s customers understand the strategic advantage of laying the technical and organizational foundation for this future now, working with a trusted partner whose entire focus is social.”