NEW YORK & LONDON & MELBOURNE, Australia & COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Trustpilot, the leading review community for global online shoppers, today announced that it raised $73.5 million in a Series D investment round. The round was led by the private equity firm Vitruvian Partners. Previous investors DFJ Esprit, Index Ventures, Northzone and Seed Capital Denmark also contributed significantly to this round.
Trustpilot will use this funding to continue its rapid growth in North America and globally, investing even more in the processes, people and technology to help strengthen its leading position as the online standard for brands that want to increase trust, transparency and customer success. Trustpilot provides verified, third-party reviews via an open community where consumers can share their brand experiences, which is a process that drives purchasing decisions today. The Series D investment round follows a milestone year of 80 percent growth for Trustpilot and brings total investments in the company to $118.5 million.
Feedback collected through the Trustpilot platform enables leading brands such as B&H Photo, Dental Plans, JustFab, Rosetta Stone, SelectQuote, Silver Star Brands and Uship to not only increase customer retention, individually tailor customer experiences and prove marketing return on investment (ROI), but also to make informed decisions about service and product development and rally sales, marketing and customer experience teams.
“Every day more than 10,000 consumers sign up for a Trustpilot account, demonstrating the growing global trend that a brand is no longer what the company says it is; it’s what the customers say it is,” said Trustpilot Founder and CEO Peter Holten Mühlmann. “Trustpilot is at the forefront of this trend, and we will use this round of funding to invest in teams and technology that enable us to amplify our position as the online standard for trust.”
Boasting a customer retention rate of 95 percent, Trustpilot, which is now home to 13 million reviews for more than 100,000 brands, has quickly become the standard for company reviews online. To ensure that it continues to meet its high standards of trust and transparency, Trustpilot has a team of 30 people working around the clock to make sure reviews comply with guidelines and to combat fraudulent behavior on the platform. Trustpilot’s Series D announcement is one of the highest amounts of investment generated in the history of Denmark, which ranked No. 1 out of 146 countries on Forbes’ list of Best Countries for Business.
Commenting on the deal, Vitruvian Partner Ben Johnson said, “Consumers increasingly recognize that peer-to-peer reviews have become essential resources. There is a huge global market opportunity for online reviews based on the desire of customers around the world to find trusted sources of recommendations in every category. Trustpilot is a technology leader and pioneer in this area, and its opportunity is to reach customers in new markets and to continue extending the benefits of online reviews to new global brands.” Johnson will join the board of directors at Trustpilot.
About Trustpilot
Founded in 2007 by CEO Peter Holten
Mühlmann, Trustpilot is a global, multi-language, open review community
that builds trust and transparency between consumers and businesses.
Boasting more than 13 million consumer reviews of 100,000 businesses,
Trustpilot produces a TrustScore for businesses based on recent reviews.
Every day, more than 10,000 consumers sign up on Trustpilot.com, and
every month, 500,000 new reviews are posted on the community.
Trustpilot has customers in 65 countries and has developed strong positions in Denmark, Sweden, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in the U.S. The company is headquartered in New York, London, Copenhagen and Melbourne, and its employee base has increased from 168 people in 2013 to its current count of more than 400 employees representing 40 nationalities. Trustpilot was selected as one of Crain’s 2014 Best Places to Work in New York City.
https://www.trustpilot.com
for reviewers
http://business.trustpilot.com
for businesses
About Vitruvian Partners LLP
Vitruvian Partners LLP
(“Vitruvian”) is an independent private equity firm which specializes in
middle market buyouts, growth buyouts and growth capital investments in
the United Kingdom and Northern Europe. Vitruvian focuses on investing
in ‘dynamic situations’ in industries characterized by growth and
change, such as business services, technology/internet, media, telecoms,
financial services, healthcare and consumer services. In December 2013,
Vitruvian announced that it had closed the fundraising of its second
fund, Vitruvian Investment Partnership II (“VIP II”), at its
self-imposed cap of £1 billion ($1.6 billion; €1.2billion). Vitruvian
has offices in London, Munich and Stockholm. In 2012, Vitruvian led the
$64 million funding round in Danish-founded Just Eat; in 2014 Vitruvian
also led the $66 million Series D funding round in Farfetch, which was
valued at $1 billion in its subsequent Series E funding round earlier
this year.
