The Estonian-founded sales CRM company, Pipedrive, has received a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners, a global investment firm; with the investment, the company is now valued over $1 billion, thus becoming a unicorn.
The new majority investor in Pipedrive, Vista Equity Partners, is an investment firm that focusses on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses.
Ragnar Sass, one of Pipedrive’s founders, said this was Estonia’s second-biggest exit yet after Skype; Pipedrive is now valued at USD1.5 billion. Skype was acquired by eBay in 2005 for USD2.6 billion.
Pipedrive’s existing investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Atomico, DTCP and Rembrandt Venture Partners, will continue as minority investors in the company and will partner with Vista and the Pipedrive team to accelerate the company’s growth trajectory.
“Reaching ‘unicorn’ status and partnering with Vista will enable us to accelerate our mission to support SMBs as they continue to digitise their businesses in order to grow, the CEO of Pipedrive, Raj Sabhlok, said in a statement.
Most unicorns per capita among small countries
Pipedrive CRM – customer relationship management – uses artificial intelligence and automation to help sales teams manage leads and deals efficiently, track customer and prospect communications and ultimately, drive more revenue for their business.
Pipedrive was founded in Estonia in 2010. Today, its software is used by sales teams at over 95,000 companies across the world. It’s headquartered in New York City and has offices across Europe and the US.
With Pipedrive, Estonia now has five unicorns – Skype, Taxify, TransferWise and Playtech are also part of that family. A unicorn is a term in the business world to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over USD1 billion. Estonia has the largest number of unicorns per capita of any small country in the world.
Cover: Pipedrive’s offices in Tallinn, Estonia.
