Dovetail valuation soars to just under $1 billion following $87 million Series A

The year is off to a flying start for capital raises in Australia, with Dovetail joining the likes of HappyCo, TradeSquare and iNSPIRETEK in raising cash, today announcing an $87 million Series A.

The raise, led by Accel with participation from existing investors including Blackbird and Felicis Ventures, gives the customer research platform a valuation of close to $1 billion.

New investors in the raise included some of the global tech scene’s heavy hitters like Stewart Butterfield (CEO of Slack), Vlad Magdalin (CEO of Webflow) and Daniel Yanisse (CEO of Checkr).

Founded in 2017, the company has achieved the milestone in just under five years - during which Dovetail has raised a total of $98 million.

According to Dovetail, the new capital will be used to support its continued investment in the company which is based in Sydney and San Francisco, building the system of record for an organisation’s customer knowledge.

“In just two years since we invested in Dovetail, Benjamin and Bradley defined the vision for the customer insights repository category and executed on that vision with unmatched precision,” Felicis general partner Victoria Treyger said.

“The company grew revenue 8x, built a recruiting machine that raised the bar with every new hire, and developed the superpower to rapidly iterate in every area of the business, from robust product releases to innovating on the product-led growth model to acquire enterprise customers.”

For Dovetail co-founders Benjamin Humphrey (CEO) and Bradley Ayers (CTO/COO) the injection of capital comes as an opportune time, with organisations globally doubling down on user experience and customer centricity as strategic amplifiers of growth.

“I’m proud to say Dovetail is becoming a must-have for many organisations,” Humphrey said.

“Through the insights created on our platform, teams can quickly make good decisions based on everything they know about their customers.

“However, we have only scratched the surface. There are many more opportunities to serve unmet needs in this space. With Accel’s partnership and this new capital, I’m excited to continue growing our team to build new functionality and launch new products.”

Accel partner Rich Wong said the global venture capital firm was excited to support the journey of Dovetail which counts the likes of Affirm, Arm, Atlassian, Canva, Deloitte, PwC, Porsche, Shopify, Starbucks and Workday as clients.

“Dovetail is quickly becoming the formative system of record for customer research, in the same way Atlassian did for developers,” Wong said.

“With its slick UI (user interface) and powerful collaboration features, Dovetail is extending user research to the entire organisation and redefining how companies manage their product and customer experience,” added Arun Mathew, partner at Accel.

“Benjamin and Bradley have built a strong team in a flourishing region, and we are thrilled to support this next step.”

Blackbird Ventures partner Nick Crocker, who first invested in Dovetail when the team was just three people, said the platform could soon reach Atlassian levels of scale.

“If Dovetail continues on its current customer and revenue growth trajectory, it can achieve Atlassian scale success,” Crocker said.

“The velocity of product development, caliber of talent and customer obsession, is stunning to watch. We’re thrilled to be partnered with Dovetail on their journey.”

The achievement comes after 12 months of scaling for Dovetail, during which it says it nearly tripled its revenue, tripled its headcount from 20 to 65 people, launched new reporting and data discovery features, opened an office in San Francisco, and launched integrations with Zoom, Google Drive and Slack.

An upcoming integration with Atlassian is next on the to-do list for Dovetail, where users will be able to wear customer insights into their existing workflows, tools and processes.