CEO: Jeff Lunsford
Amount of funding
raised to date: $160 million
No. of local employees: More than 200
Investors: Silver Lake Partners, Citi Ventures, Georgian Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Omega Venture Partners, Presidio Ventures
Headquarters: Torrey Pines
Year founded: 2008
Company description: Tealium builds customer data platforms, which help companies manage marketing data across different systems.
San Diego-based software company Tealium closed a $55 million funding round May 15. The new funds will help Tealium grow as the competition heats up Chief Financial Officer Doug
Lindroth said.
Tealium offers a customer data platform, which companies can use to manage marketing data across their systems. For example, if a user was reading about a product on their phone, but bought it using a laptop, Tealium’s platform could connect the data from both devices.
That information could be used for in-person transactions, too. For customers that order an item online, but leave a few others unpurchased in their shopping carts, those items could be available at the register when they pick up their order.
“The enterprise gets to see everything about the customer when they interact,” Lindroth said. “The main goal is to improve the customer experience.”
Tealium has grown significantly since it first entered the market 10 years ago. The company currently has more than 400 employees, including more than 200 in San Diego. It has more than 800 customers, including Domino’s Pizza and Cox Communications.
Though the idea of a customer data platform (CDP) was nascent when Tealium first started, other competitors have entered the market. In March, both Adobe and Salesforce announced they would launch their own CDPs. The surge in activity has also attracted investors’ attention.
“There have been a lot of tailwinds with other companies coming out with other customer data platforms,” Lindroth said. “We actually didn’t have to raise another round. We had enough funding, but we felt like there was an opportunity forming in the market before us.”
Silver Lake Partners’ growth stage capital fund, Silver Lake Waterman, led the $50 million Series F round. Silver Lake had previously led a debt round that Tealium raised in 2014.
“They’ve been an active participant and a board observer of the company since then,” Lindroth said.
ABN AMRO, Bain Capital, Declaration Partners, Georgian Partners, Industry Ventures, Parkwood and Presidio Ventures also participated in the round.
Tealium plans to grow its headcount, and will also use the funding to invest more in its platform and technology partners that integrate with it. For example, Tealium’s platform can currently connect with Adobe Analytics, Amazon Web Services, Google Ads, Twilio and a host of other services.
“The more data that comes into the platform, the more analysis you can do, and the better the customer experience,” he said.
Tealium is also nearing the scale where it could look to go public, though Lindroth indicated the company was in no hurry. He said it was something Tealium would look at down the road, but there are no immediate plans for an IPO.
“We’ve all run public companies before, so we’re well prepared for that, but that’s not in today’s immediate plan,” he said. “It’s something we talk about internally and prepare for.”
Tealium CEO Jeff Lunsford has led two IPOs during his career; he took Limelight Networks public in 2007 and took WebSideStory public in 2004 before it was acquired by Adobe.
Co-founders Mike Anderson and Ali Behnam also worked for WebSideStory, and Lindroth had served as chief financial officer for Limelight Networks after it went public.
