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The Office of the local lists via the Internet is a nightmare for small businesses and great opportunities for startup Yext local advertising. New York City, the company just closed a $ 10 million series d round, led by Michael Walrath through his investment vehicle WGI group. Other existing investors also participated in the NRP, Ron Conway of SV Angel and Sutter Hill Ventures. Walrath was the founder of right media (sold to Yahoo for $ 850 million) and became Chairman of Yext in March last year.
This was very much an internal round, but in a higher assessment than $ 25 million c round two years ago (which was called at that time (B), but was technically C). Yext and business pay-per-call basis local business ads. And it's a decent sized business that brings in tens of millions and the company even entertained some acquisition proposals. "We thought about whether or not to sell or do something that could be as big as 100 times," says CEO Howard Lerman ", and we chose the latter.
Instead of selling, Yext decided to go in another direction and spent 10 million dollars to develop a completely new product for local businesses, called PowerListings, which is growing rapidly and eventually will overtake the remuneration of each call to the business. Originally called tags, PowerListings gives local businesses one panel where they can manage their listings across dozens of sites such as Yelp, SuperPages, Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, Yahoo local, and more. PowerListings allows traders to correct inaccurate lists via the Internet and update them all from one central location. Over the past 100 days, the company recorded 4500 seats and select growth (see chart).
According to Lerman, that there are only about 200.000 local enterprises in verticals, Yext focused on who can use pay per call service (which it will continue to work). But the need for a way to manage local lists on the Web covers the 20 million enterprises in the United States so why not sell the business to pay for the call and take the money to build the power of lists business? Lerman said that he wants to keep the same team and stack technology, as well as use the existing relationship with Yext's local business listings sites.
A new money he wants to integrate more than 100 local sites and applications so that Yext is a portal of local companies to manage their lists, information on the Internet. "Whenever someone searches for local companies, we want to be there to help synchronize the list business," said Lerman. Yext is also working on mobile applications for local businesses that will enable them to manage their lists, their iPhones and even upload new photos to their location. With one click, they can change the photos of their business on Citysearch, Yelp, Yahoo local and everywhere their listings will appear on the network.
For the majority of local enterprises, their lists are their main presence on the Internet, and they do not always have control over these lists say about their location. Yext wants to give them back to the control.
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