Ulrik Bo Larsen, founder and CEO, Falcon Social. Image via Hanne Paludan Kristensen
Falcon Social, the Copenhagen, Denmark-based social-media management platform for marketing and sales teams in enterprises, has raised €6m (US$8m) of new equity finance. The Series A round was led by the German venture capital (VC) firm Target Partners, with follow-on participation from existing investor NorthCap Partners.
With the new capital, Falcon Social is now planning to aggressively speed up its international sales and marketing expansion, and to pump further investment in its technology platform.
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital city, Falcon Social provides a SaaS [software-as-a-service] platform that aims to make it easier for marketing departments in companies and organisations to create, launch and measure social media campaigns in real-time across multiple social media platforms and services. Think Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, and display-ad networks.
The Danish start-up Falcon would be viewed in cloud computing circles as a competitior to the likes of HootSuite, the Canadian SaaS tool for social media management providers, and Belgian start-up Engagor. Earlier this month, Engagor raised US$2.6m in Series A funding – the round was led by Hummingbird Ventures.
Today’s investment news for Falcon comes in the midst of a year in which the company posted a growth trajectory, while also tripling its employee headcount, and forging new deals with enterprises.
So far in 2013, Falcon has signed accounts with the likes of Warner Music, Swarovski, Stena Line, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orangina Schweppes, Conde Nast and First Hotel Group.
And, the company has been getting recognition for its technology, too. Just this past April, Falcon Social won the 2013 Red Herring Top 100 Europe. This accolade came after it was voted an ICT top 4 company at the European Venture Contest in Berlin, Germany, at the end of 2012.
Innovating in the digital marketing space
Falcon, which was founded by Ulrik Bo Larsen (now CEO) in 2010, has designed its SaaS platform with the aim of making it easier to support large teams in multiple countries. For instance, Falcon has come up with Real Time Content Previewing and Reach Tracking.
According to the company, this innovation allows users to see exactly how content will appear before it is posted and how it performs in real-time indirectly after it is posted on social media channels.
Falcon’s Collaborative Calendar also diarises the details and images of content planned for distribution across marketing teams, it seems.
As for the Real Time Content Reach Performance, this shows how many people have looked at content by the hour, according to Falcon.
Social-media management platforms for enterprises
In a statement, Kurt Müller, partner at Target Partners, said the group has been tracking the enterprise social media management space for some time.
“Falcon has demonstrated that it has a scalable sales model, winning over 70 new customers in the first half of 2013 alone,” he said.
Meanwhile, Falcon’s chief, Bo Larsen, spoke about gleaning Target Partners as an investor and partner in the company’s latest funding round.
“We have seen great interest from investors in this round and this reinforces our clients’ belief that we are doing something extraordinary in terms of innovation and completeness of vision in this new enterprise software category,” he said.
The investment mix
Target Partners invests in early-stage companies. At the moment, Target has €225m under management.
Falcon’s existing investor Northcap is a Danish VC company that was founded in 1999.
Its current and past investment portfolio comprises more than 40 northern-European and US-based IT start-ups.
Apparently, Northcap has a particular interest in companies active in cloud computing, e-commerce and mobility solutions.
Falcon is now eyeing up further global growth, and fast
Larsen said Falcon is now looking forward to introducing more innovations on the platform. He said the company wants to speed up the pace of international expansion on the back of this new investment.
