Village Gamer

Cloud-based web and mobile dashboard solutions developer Klipfolio Inc announced this morning that the company has secured $1.7-million (CDN) in funding, led by the BDC Venture Capital IT Fund, Mistral Venture Partners and including several leading early-stage investor groups from both Canada and the United States including Fundfire (Ottawa), BOLDstart Ventures (New York), Acadia Woods (New York), and CommonAngels Ventures (Boston).

The Ottawa-based startup has recently grabbed the attention of industry watchers and many of the world’s most recognized brands for its real-time business dashboard, a flexible and powerful solution that allows business users to unite cloud-based and on-premise data sources to create meaningful dashboards without the cost or complexity of traditional business intelligence tools. Klipfolio has experienced dramatic year-over-year organic revenue growth and has a growing customer list that includes Fortune 500 companies.

The $1.7-million in funding will allow Klipfolio to continue to grow its customer base in a global business intelligence (BI) software market that is projected to reach $17.1 (US) billion by 2016, according to market research firm, Gartner.*

Klipfolio has a diverse customer base that includes leaders in healthcare, financial services, consumer packaged goods, non-profit, manufacturing and government. With more than 1,100 customers in 2013, Klipfolio has experienced rapid customer growth since the organization launched a cloud-based dashboard solution in 2011.

“Now that cloud-based computing has been broadly accepted, I expect to see a surge in the uptake of BI in 2014. By focusing on a combination of user self-service, mobile, and cloud-based BI, Klipfolio is well positioned to get significant traction in a market where there is a strong potential growth in BI adoption,” said Mike Ferguson, Managing Director, leading IT market analyst and consulting company, Intelligent Business Strategies.

“The decision-making landscape is changing. Line of business users are desperate to consolidate and visualize the overwhelming number of metrics they need on a daily basis,” said Allan Wille, Chief Executive Officer, Klipfolio. “The future is all about making business intelligence software easier, friendlier, smarter, and more cost-effective – and with today’s announcement, Klipfolio is making this happen.”

Popular online automotive review site Edmunds.com is a long-time Klipfolio customer. Based in Santa Monica, CA with more than 550 employees, Edmunds.com was recently ranked by the Maritz Research’s 2013 Online Customer Review Study as one of the most trusted online review sites, ranking 4th overall.

With 200 million visitors to its site annually, Edmunds.com needed a solution that gave it real-time insights into its business. “How you present data really matters. It matters in the sense of the story you want to tell as well as how digestible and actionable it is for the end user. We chose Klipfolio because of how easy it was to integrate with our back-end data, and the ease of learning the UI in terms of transforming and getting value out of that data,” said George K. Kang, Vice President, Inside Sales & Dealer Development, Edmunds.com.

“Ottawa has long been recognized as a global centre of business intelligence software innovation. Klipfolio has grown out of that long tradition of success, creating a solution that truly changes the game for organizations looking to effectively harness their business data to help make better decisions,” said Ron Warburton, Managing Partner, BDC Venture Capital IT Fund. “BDC saw in Klipfolio an organization ready to take that critical next step in its growth, building on a solid foundation of proven technology and strong global customer relationships.”

“Given Ottawa’s dominance in the BI space, we weren’t surprised to find a fast-growing company based here that was focused on the fastest growing segment within BI – Data Visualization. Consistently ranked in the top 5 in their space by industry research studies, and generating sales to some of the world’s most respected brands, Klipfolio is leading the next wave of BI services that puts the power of Big Data in the hands of the user,” said Code Cubitt, Managing Director at Mistral Venture Partners. “We are excited to partner with this passionate team of business intelligence innovators to help take Klipfolio to the next level as a global business intelligence leader.”

According to the Klipfolio management team, Klipfolio plans to use the funding to expand its operational team and global reach.

*Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence Software Revenue to Grow 7 Percent in 2013, Feb. 19, 2013