Led by B Capital Group, the round values Pendo at $2.6 billion as company tops $100M in ARR
Pendo, a platform that accelerates successful product adoption, announced $150 million in funding to help companies bridge the gap between how users expect software to work and their experience actually using it. Led by B Capital Group, with participation from Silver Lake Waterman and existing investors, the Series F round will fund aggressive global expansion, strategic acquisitions and continued innovation in
Pendo’s platform that helps product and IT teams drive adoption of the software they build for
customers or provide to internal employees.
The investment brings Pendo’s total funds raised to $356 million and its valuation to $2.6 billion.
The company also announced a significant revenue milestone; it has surpassed $100 million in
annual recurring revenue.
Recommended ITech News: Google Cloud Region Goes Live in Delhi NCR in India
“The wholesale shift to digital has exposed a gap between user expectations and
reality—workers expect business software to be as easy to use as their personal apps, but
when was the last time someone called a helpdesk for Instagram?” said Todd Olson, CEO and
co-founder of Pendo. “We built Pendo to bridge this experience gap, which is why our growth
has paralleled software itself. This new investment allows us to innovate faster to serve product
teams and their counterparts in IT, who are responsible for driving successful software
adoption.”
Pendo’s growth maps to the rising influence of the Chief Product Officer, one of the fastest
growing titles on LinkedIn, jumping 41 percent over the last three years. Initially a more common
role in technology companies, traditional businesses are now taking notice, with companies like
Walmart, Mastercard, Bloomberg and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services hiring
for the role in recent years. In the Forrester Research report “Research Overview: Digital
Product Management”, published for CIOs in July 2020, co-authors Nigel Fenwick and Randy
Heffner write, “As your business looks to sell new digital products, your CEO needs an
executive with full revenue responsibility for the digital products.”
The chief product officer used to be the only member of the C-suite without a system of record,
but with rising influence comes demand for better tools. Just like martech equipped the CMO
with data and tools to drive smarter and more efficient marketing, a “product tech” category has
formed to equip the CPO and Chief Digital Officer with data and tools to deliver better software
experiences. Funding to startups serving product teams quadrupled from 2016-2020.
Recommended ITech News: Lightspin Named 2021 CRN Emerging Vendor in Security Category
But it’s not just product teams responsible for ensuring software provides value. In distributed
and hybrid workplaces, where the employee experience is increasingly digital, IT teams are
responsible for ensuring employees are onboarded and trained to proficiency on the software
they use at work. Failure to adopt software in this context means lost productivity, low employee
morale and ultimately, attrition. Pendo’s suite of digital adoption solutions enables IT teams to
train this increasingly remote workforce how to use the software required to perform their jobs.
Demand for those tools is also driving Pendo’s growth.
“Pendo is a pioneer and clear leader in the field of software for product teams, which we’ve seen
become increasingly important to enterprises as they grow,” said Rashmi Gopinath, general
partner at B Capital Group. “Pendo’s fundamentals, growth and ever-improving product suite
further position them for success and global expansion.”
Joining B Cap and Silver Lake Waterman in the round are existing investors Battery Ventures,
Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, General Atlantic, Tiger Global Management,
FirstMark Capital, Geodesic Capital, IDEA Fund Partners and Contour Venture Partners.
Pendo will bring product and IT teams around the world together this Fall for Pendomonium, an
annual conference for learning and sharing best practices for driving software product adoption.
Recommended ITech News: Singapore’s Kris Infotech Acquires Majority Stake In Ags Tek Partners, Plans Major US Expansion
