With its U.S. beachhead already in place in New York, Denmark’s Falcon Social is looking to grow its presence stateside.
The Copenhagen-based software-as-a-service company last week raised $16 million in a Series B round led by Dutch firm Prime Ventures, with Germany’s Target Partners and Denmark’s Northcap participating. Falcon Social so far has raised $25.33 million in funding.
Falcon Social’s software is used by businesses to track mentions of their brands in social media and to manage interactions with their customers across such networks.
CEO and founder Ulrik Bo Larsen says his company currently has about 15 staffers in New York and plans to strengthen its foothold. “What we’re going to do on the scaling side, specifically in New York, is substantially ramp up headcount for all customer facing personnel,” he says. Those hires are expected to be in the “upper end of double-digits” this year, he says.
Last May, the company opened up its U.S. headquarters in New York. Falcon Social, founded in 2010, works with some 400 companies including Toyota, Coca-Cola, and Jaguar. Larsen says his company wants to expand its U.S. presence because of the growth in business here.
The expansion plans will include a relocation of the offices from Broadway in Manhattan to the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, he says. “We are looking to add senior leadership in the city, especially on the sales side for the entire U.S. but building the team in New York.”
There are a lot of companies though—such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Sprinklr, and Spredfast—that develop software enterprises use to track interactions with consumers or manage marketing campaigns on social media. That includes capturing consumer feedback directed at the companies. “People are living in their social media feeds, and if they badmouth a product or have a problem, they expect those brands to reach out,” Larsen says.
Social media management can be fragmented though, he says, with some providers cobbling together suites of technology from different sources. Larsen says Falcon Social aims to do the job in one software platform. “This is industry is in its infancy,” he says. “There are a lot of challenges to handle that haven’t been covered before.”
