Called “the biggest software company you haven’t heard of yet” by one of its shiny new backers, 10-year-old Qualtrics has gotten $70 million from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital in the VCs’ largest joint investment ever. It’s also the company’s first outside investment.
Reportedly profitable since it started, it’s supposed to use the money to expand its SaaS products beyond market research and accelerate its global growth, expecting to hire another 250 employees to add to the existing 200 in the next year.
Qualtrics is used for online data collection and analysis claiming to make it “easy for anyone in a company to conduct PhD-level research.” It figures outsourced research and data collection is too expensive – it’s shooting at data generated from customers, sales reps, channel partners and employees – and competitive tools are either too basic or too complicated.