Let the good times roll in enterprise tech. One of Boston’s fast-rising Internet startups has some more cash to throw around.
Acquia, a Web content management software company, says it has raised $55 million in equity financing, led by new investor Centerview Capital Technology. Its previous investors, including New Enterprise Associates and Split Rock Partners, also participated in the growth round, which brings Acquia’s total funding to roughly $175 million.
Acquia was started in 2007 by Dries Buytaert (pictured above on the right) and Jay Batson. The idea was to build software products and services on top of Drupal, an open-source Web publishing system. The plan seems to be working, though entrepreneurs and their investors always want faster growth—hence the new financing.
Led by CEO Tom Erickson (pictured above on left), the company now has 720 employees spread across 10 offices worldwide, according to a spokeswoman. Its big customers include Intuit, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University.
Acquia’s revenue has been growing pretty fast in recent years. The company reported $100 million in sales last year, up from $68 million in 2013. That kind of growth has put Acquia on observers’ short list for prospective IPOs. But in the tech world, IPOs have been few and far between, in part because of the later-stage money available in the private market.
In any case, Acquia seems to be in good position to take advantage of the huge shift to digital customer experience. Almost all organizations—from retailers to insurance companies to banks to entertainment companies to universities—need to have a strong online presence these days. And along with buzzy (yet unsexy) sectors like application performance management, data center management, networking, and data storage, Acquia’s bread and butter of website management would seem to have a promising future.
