Unruly Secures $25M in Funding from Leading Technology Investors

Today we announced that we've secured $25M in first round private funding - the largest ever for a private company in the social video space.  The announcement has already been picked up by several news outlets, including: Econsultancy, All Voices, Frenchweb, AltAssets, VentureBeat.

Below is the email that Unruly CEO and Co-Founder Scott Button sent to all Unrulies this morning:

"So after a few late nights, too much coffee, and a fair amount of pizza we finally closed our funding round. The size of the round is $25m. 

"That's considerably more than we originally anticipated raising, as we received lots of offers from top-tier VC firms, and the round itself was oversubscribed. It's a series A, which just means that it's the first round of institutional capital that we've taken. The investors are Amadeus Capital, Van den Ende and Deitmers, and the Business Growth Fund. Together, they now hold a minority stake in Unruly. "A bit about the funds and why we chose them. Amadeus is a top class, highly tech-orientated VC firm, with a fabulous UK tech heritage.

"Hermann Hauser, one of the co-founders of Amadeus, co-founded Acorn Computers, helped design the BBC Micro, and co-founded the Olivetti Research Lab at Cambridge. (I wrote some of my first code on a BBC Micro. My mum was a teacher and she used to borrow the machine in the holidays because we couldn't afford to buy one. No fear: I did not pursue this vocation!) Van den Ende and Deitmers, by contrast, is a Dutch firm founded by Joop van den Ende - he's the Ende of Endemol! -  and Hubert Deitmers, another of Endemol's board directors, so they have a ton of expertise around content and media and they complement Amadeus really well.

"The Business Growth Fund is a brand new GBP 2.5 billion fund whose mission is to help build the next generation of world-class UK companies. "This is a mission that we share and applaud and we're very happy to be one of their first investments. All of the firms were very excited about Unruly, about the social video space, and about the prospect of building a European tech company that can take on the world and win, so we're very glad to be welcoming them to team Unruly.

"We'll be holding a soiree over the next week or two, where you can meet people from all the firms and find out a bit more about them.

"As we've said all along, Unruly doesn't need to raise capital. We're growing tremendously fast. We turned over more revenue last quarter than we did in the whole of the previous year and are fast approaching an annual revenue runrate of $50m. And we've been profitable for the last three years.

"But this is about ambition, speed and scale. The extra capital will enable us to aggressively accelerate our international expansion. We're set on becoming the dominant player in every major advertising territory within the next two years and this will help us get there. We'll do this with style, we'll do it with a sense of fun, and we'll do it in a human way that doesn't have everyone chained to their desks 24/7 but we're not about to go soft!

"We intend to retain all the rigour and discipline that got us this point without needing external capital. It's important that we maintain margins, that we continue to improve our management of working capital, and that we continue to improve the revenue efficiency (revenue per employee) of the business. Why? Because this is the stuff that, allied to fast revenue-growth, will create lots of value at an exit.

"We will invest heavily where we think there is a solid business case, but we are not, for instance, going to start chucking money at new hires to solve problems that would be better solved through improved product design or better business process. We will invest in core product - we will be hiring more engineers and more technical staff to buffer the engineering team. We will also be investing in non-revenue-generating support functions such as IT, HR, and finance, because we can't scale the company, can't jump from 100 staff to 200 staff over the next 12 months, without significantly upgrading those functions and bringing in more awesome people.

"If there's any area you think we should be investing in, any issues we should be addressing, but aren't, come and talk to me. Walk over to my desk.

"Buttonhole me in the kitchen. Tell me to come and grab a sandwich with you at lunchtime. We have a lot to do and I expect everyone, at all levels, to be thinking about how we can do stuff better. Unruly is designed to be a meritocracy from top to bottom, a place where the quality of ideas and outcomes always trumps hierarchy, so don't be afraid to contribute and to make yourself heard. "Here's to 2012 and a huge Unruly future!"