Typeform, a Barcelona-based company, has been trying to attract investors for its “conversational platform” — the customizable survey/quiz builder software. It’s been many years since it first tapped them. It’s been around 4.5 years since Typeform’s $35 million Series B. This is the result of “sustainable and efficient growth” according to Typeform.
However, the growth in the low-code/no-code space seems to have prompted the (relatively) veteran form builder feel the need for more gas — as it announces the close of a $135million Series C.
Sofina, a family-controlled investment firm, leads the round. Other Typeform investors include General Atlantic, Index Ventures and Point Nine Capital. Connect Ventures is also represented by new investors Top Tier Capital Partners. GP Bullhound, Teamworthy Ventures, and Trium Venture Partners are also part of the round.
Typeform also disclosed that its post-money value after the financing round was $935 million. It also disclosed that its post-money valuation after this financing round is $935 million. However, it sees potential for further growth as more businesses turn to digital tools to increase their sales.
Joaquim Lecha, CEO of Typeform (aka “Kim”) Lecha says that brands are at an inflection point and need to provide digital interactions that lead customers to make real connections. Typeform has a huge opportunity to offer a unique experience and raising this round will allow us to accelerate our growth. We won’t prioritize profitability as we scale but we will continue to be focused on ensuring a healthy runway with predictable ROI.
Benjamin Sabatier, principal of Sofina, commented in a statement about the potential growth opportunity Sofina has also been spying on here. He said: “The accelerated shift by consumers to digital channels and the increasing importance digital native brands are driving us to have closer online engagement with our customers. Typeform’s conversational solution generates higher response rates and provides richer insights to enhance consumers’ experiences. Sofina is proud of Typeform’s visionary team and its ability to create incredibly flexible solutions that can be used for a variety of purposes.
Typeform’s Series C investment brings its total investment to $187 million. This is before the explosion in no/low-code tools that have come to market in recent times. It also includes a range of services that are designed to make it easier for nontechie professionals, such as website ‘landers’ chatbots and auto-rendering design elements in code.
On the one hand, you could argue that Typeform was ahead in the no-code race. On the other hand, Typeform is now facing a lot more competition in marketing tech. This was evident when Typeform’s founders had the idea to deconstruct and beautify online forms using a little designer (white space) to increase engagement.
This, in turn, means that more investment is required to meet growing demand and counter competitive threats.
Lecha states that the funding will go towards product development, accessibility and more integrations. As it seeks to increase the 500M+ “interactions”, its products generate every year, Lecha will be expanding its remote team of 450 people worldwide.
Typeform is already expanding beyond its initial focus on ‘design-led forms’ and now offers adjacent products such as Typeform Chat, a chatbot builder that requires no code.
Online form building is becoming a very common function. There are many competitors, from established players such as Jotform and GoCanvas to younger companies like Typeform (like Cognito Forms) to tech giants such as Google and Microsoft. There are plenty of chatbot builders available these days. Typeform is keen to be seen as a “conversational data collection platform”. However, its USP isn’t data capture — it’s howit’s being gathered.
Typeform’s personal, design-led approach to digital interactions makes otherwise clinical interactions “feel like a conversation,” Lecha says. It provides its users with a customized digital canvas and tools that allow them to show their brand through increased outreach engagement.
Data collection done right can build stronger connections and collect better information that helps customers convert. So data capture becomes an opportunity to sell, not just a box to be checked. Lecha cites the Typeform lead generation survey it distributed to its users. He says that leads collected with its tools had a higher qualification rate than 95 %”.).
He says that Typeform allows customers to interact with brands through a variety of interfaces that are interactive and fun, but still feel like a one-on-one conversation.
Typeform’s design-led approach to marketing outreach. Image Credits: Typeform
Typeform currently has 125,000+ paying customers who are interested in its products.
It also offers a free plan, giving it the opportunity to upsell paid plans that offer tiered rates based upon usage.
Lecha informs ProWellTech that the funding will be used to help Lecha become the indispensable platform for the marketing technology stack. “The gold standard in digital interactions that feel real and authentic. We are committed to improving the way we help customers solve mission-critical workflows so they can truly connect with their audiences and grow the business.
We want to keep adding new features and enhancing the ease-of use of our products. We also want to provide more ways to share or embed forms. And we will add customization tools that enable our customers to express their brands even more strongly.
“Our technology and approach leads to exceptional insights. We want to give our customers more power to act on those insights by strengthening our data visualizations and analytics. Typeform must be used in conjunction with other tools. We integrate with all tech stack apps and will continue to build more integrations with technology partners.
He discusses the “conversational space” competitive landscape — also known as personalized marketing outreach that feels more approachable, friendly, and reactive than a static form. However, he also believes there is plenty of cross-over that allows rivals to collaborate on integrations.
“The conversational experience market is fascinating in that rivals can have complementary products or integrate with solutions that may also be considered to be competitors. Qualtrics and Intercom are examples of companies offering tools that can compete with Typeform in certain ways. However, we have also worked with many of these companies to create integrations,” he says.
“Our goal is to create the best solution possible for our customers. In many cases, that means meeting their stakeholders where they are and finding ways to work with their technology stack. We do everything we can to help businesses grow their audience.
While tech giants such as Microsoft and Google offer form-builder tools, Typeform is happy and able to integrate. It allows its users to “import, analyse and augment their data and process across tools such as Google Forms, Office 365 and Excel Online,” per Lecha.
He further states that “compared to other options, our unique combination of both interaction experience and the capability for businesses to create highly personalized interactions across multiple forms, chats, or video” is what sets us apart.
Typeform uses AI/machine-learning to improve product personalization. This is evident in its VideoAsk product. It allows customers to create videos using chatbot automation and the personal touch video — allowing them to have “asynchronous video conversation” that combines the efficiency of automation with a more human/”face to face” feel.
“VideoAsk uses GTP-3 AI model to understand the video response and then provide the best answer based on conditional logic,” says Lecha. “Our AI also powers seamless speech-totext transcription for conversations between English, German, Dutch. French. Portuguese. Spanish. Catalan. Italian. Swedish. And Turkish.”
Typeform’s product is used in a wide range of industries and services, including ecommerce and professional services, software and academia.
Typeform is used to grow a business/engage an audience. Other use cases include customer outreach, recruitment, customer feedback, etc. Lecha notes that Typeform can be used as interactive forms, video, chat, and other mission-critical tasks like gathering leads, qualifying customers and engaging them in a long-term relationship.
He adds that interaction is the heart of all jobs our customers do.
We also know that Typeform can be embedded in mission-critical work flow, leveraged from multiple core functions, and deployed across a range of use cases. This helps our customers to discover new opportunities, execute plans based upon actionable insights, grow their audience, and is why we are investing in expanding our existing integration options.
Typeform CEO Kim Lecha (left) and co-founder David Okuniev. Image Credits: Typeform
Although the majority of Typeform customers are using its free plan, they are not currently generating any revenue. However, Lecha states that more than two thirds of all paying customers began as free users.
He also boasts a high rate organic growth. “They or someone they know have had a great experience using Typeform’s tools in past.” This underscores the power of freemium.
He says, “We certainly see that the flywheel powered our products continues to inspire loyality once a user views all the ways they use Typeform to interact their audiences throughout the funnel — this is why so many users start with our free edition end up becoming paid clients, unlocking more value.”
Typeform’s largest customer market, both in terms of revenues and users, is still the United States. Europe is close behind.
Typeform isn’t yet profitable but Lecha said that the company is “well positioned” to prioritize profitability when the right time comes — again due to continued focus on operational efficiency.
He adds, “For now, we’re focusing on scaling our business to provide the gold standard in online interactions.”
When Lecha was asked what Typeform’s investment strategy would look like, and whether it is considering an IPO, she said that Typeform is always focused on its customer. She is confident in her plan to grow and meet increasing demand for Typeform solutions. We’ll be looking at all options to help us realize our vision as we move forward on our quest to build a world of personal business relationships.