earlier $2 million investment round.<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really about continuing that push overseas, and exploring opportunities in south-east Asia,\u201d Mahoney says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will allow the company to deliver upon an aggressive product roadmap that places Stackla at the leading edge of digital marketing technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stackla is a social marketing platform that aggregates user-generated content from social networking sites and integrates this at touch points within the marketing stack.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It has an open API approach, enabling clients to curate the presentation of their content.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The main challenge through the investment round was differentiating the startup in this competitive market in the US, Mahoney says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the sheer size of the US market and the amount of competition over here it\u2019s more difficult to cut through,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe focused on the fact that we felt our category was still in its infancy and has a long path towards maturity. From a tech perspective our approach is completely unique among our competitors.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an API and platform-first approach and that clearly differentiates us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was also important to ensure they were speaking to the appropriate investors, he says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of VCs are looking for unicorns \u2013 those life-changing, world-changing companies,\u201d Mahoney says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a software business there\u2019s not that enormous scale they often seek out, but we got a lot better at targeting the right types of VCs and ensuring their portfolio was geared towards our business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mahoney won\u2019t reveal what valuation was placed on the startup for the investment round, or the current revenue, but does say this has grown by more than 250% year-on-year thanks to expanding overseas.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Australian business has always been strong. We were able to benefit from our strong name and reputation in the Australia market and we continue to do well in that region,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe became established in the UK at the end of last year and the team there are very, very successful. Whilst revenue in the US has been a slower burn, we\u2019re confident of its potential, particularly with the clients we\u2019re talking to now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than half of the startup\u2019s revenue is now generated outside of Australia, and Stackla has over 250 clients around the world, including the likes of Qantas, Toyota and McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Want to grow your business with Instagram? <\/i>StartupSmart School can help<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More Australian investors should be backing startups like social media aggregator Stackla, rampersand co-founder Paul Naphtali says. \u00a0 It comes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,17,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}