Lithium Technologies Raises $53.4 Million to Joust With Jive
January 05, 2012, 4:54 PM ESTBy Ari Levy
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Lithium Technologies Inc., a maker of social-media marketing software, raised $53.4 million in venture capital to challenge Salesforce.com Inc. and Jive Software Inc.
The financing, led by New Enterprise Associates and SAP AG’s venture arm, will be used for investments in sales and marketing, geographic expansion and hiring engineers, Emeryville, California-based Lithium said today in a statement. The company’s valuation wasn’t disclosed.
Lithium is capitalizing on the popularity of social software for businesses after Jive’s initial public offering last month raised $161 million. Lithium is targeting brands that want to identify fans on social networks, communicate with them and provide rewards. The market for social software to manage customer relationships may jump to $1 billion this year from $625 million in 2010, according to researcher Gartner Inc.
“It’s a much higher priority now on corporate budgets,” Lithium Chief Executive Officer Rob Tarkoff said in an interview. “Social is not an experiment anymore. It’s a real system, and you have to understand what you get when you invest.”
The company plans to double in size by the end of this year to almost 400 employees, Tarkoff said. While Lithium doesn’t disclose financials, revenue for 2010 may have reached as much as $30 million, Gartner estimated.
Serving McDonald’s
Clients include McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, and Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s second-biggest carmaker. They use Lithium’s software to communicate with their own customers and monitor conversations on social networks such as those run by Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. The Lithium clients pay monthly subscription fees based on needs and usage.
Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Emergence Capital, Greenspring Associates, Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital also contributed to the funding round, following up on earlier investments in Lithium.
Lithium, started in 2001, was run by co-founder Lyle Fong until August, when Tarkoff succeeded him as CEO. Fong remains a board member and is chief strategist. Tarkoff joined from Adobe Systems Inc., where he was a senior vice president and ran the digital enterprise business.
--With assistance from Aaron Ricadela in San Francisco. Editors: Jeffrey Tannenbaum, Stephen West
To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net; Jennifer Sondag at jsondag@bloomberg.net
