Contact: Brenon Daly
Who needs to go public when there’s so much late-stage money sloshing around out there? That question hit us in the head this week after two startups announced, separately, that they were each raising $50m in new funding. First, it was marketing automation vendor Marketo saying it pulled in $50m in a new round led by Battery Ventures and then on Thursday, vulnerability management company Rapid7 also drew in that amount from Technology Crossover Ventures.
The latest round for Marketo, which effectively doubles the amount of capital it has raised, is particularly noteworthy. After all, Marketo has seen two of its main rivals track to the public market. Eloqua is currently on file for a $100m offering, while Responsys went public in late April, an offering that raised $79m.
In the case of Responsys, it may well consider itself fortunate that it raised money when it did. The company recently indicated that business through the end of the year is likely to be substantially slower than it had been. The warning knocked the stock about 25% below where it priced in April and half the level it had hit in the summer.