dscout Raises $7.5 Million Series B Funding Round
Platform helps companies better understand people's experience in the context of everyday life
Closing a round of funding brings up a lot of emotions: excitement, relief, fear, gratitude. Maybe a little validation. Mostly gratitude. Thank you to our amazing customers for joining us on this journey. Thank you to our incredible, engaged scouts. And to our wonderful team at dscout.
We can't wait for you to see what this funding will mean for researchers, scouts and our team!
Here's our press release—read more about it in Built in Chicago.
CHICAGO (April 12, 2018) — dscout, Inc., provider of the world’s premier in-context video research platform, announces the successful conclusion of a $7.5 million Series B financing round. Beringea LLC, a Detroit-based private equity firm providing growth capital to high potential businesses, led the round. Synetro Group, who led dscout’s two prior financing rounds, also participated.
dscout’s Software as a Service (SaaS) video research platform enables companies to capture real world product, brand and user experiences at scale, where and when they happen. Global leaders in technology, apparel, financial services, healthcare, as well as premier consulting, advertising and research agencies, use dscout to gather, manage, share and analyze millions of in-context moments from real people around the world.
“As business accelerates, every company must get closer to their customers…and do it faster,” said Michael Winnick, dscout’s CEO. "Beringea’s global presence and expertise in scaling Software as a Service businesses will help us strengthen dscout’s already-strong growth to serve this critical need. We are so excited to add Beringea to the dscout team.”
Funds from the round will be used to grow dscout’s Chicago-based sales, product, and engineering teams, and build new ways to gather rich in-context data and quickly uncover insights, aided by machine learning / artificial intelligence.
Michael Gross, managing director of Beringea, said: “dscout’s innovative approach to consumer research helps some of the world’s most influential companies make smart decisions faster. We’re proud to help the dscout team build on its track record of research industry disruption and outstanding SaaS execution.”
About dscout
dscout is the world’s leading SaaS qualitative research platform. Research respondents (“Scouts”) use its mobile apps to capture their in-the-moment experiences of products and services. dscout’s customers use its innovative web-based analysis platform to derive tremendous customer insight—and tell customers’ stories using videos, photos and quantitative data. Headquartered in Chicago, dscout serves global leaders in social media, technology, consulting, advertising, financial services, consumer products, and healthcare industries.
About Synetro Group
Synetro Group is a private investment and strategic advisory firm based in Chicago. Early stage investments (Seed/Series A) are focused on technology and business services companies, including professional services. Growth and revitalization investments are focused on technology, business services and manufacturing companies. www.synetro.com
About Beringea
Beringea provides equity and/or mezzanine debt to growth-oriented companies in the U.S. and UK. The Firm, which includes Michigan-based Beringea, LLC and its London, UK office Beringea LLP, invests in exceptional companies operating in a range of sectors, including healthcare, information technology, advanced manufacturing, digital media and ecommerce, and specialized consumer products.
With flexible capital solutions, extensive investing experience and an international footprint, Beringea’s team offers its portfolio companies the resources to grow their businesses and create value for stakeholders. For more information, visit www.beringea.com.
In the United States, Beringea operates as an SEC-registered investment advisor, Beringea, LLC. The contents of this communication piece are in no way intended as a solicitation to investors and are for new investment deal flow purposes only.
Michael Winnick is the CEO and founder of dscout. Since the platform's founding, research leaders have tapped Michael’s personal passion for harnessing context-rich, human insight to drive innovation.
Michael previously served as gravitytank’s managing partner, steering the innovation consultancy through continuous growth for nearly a decade, prior to its acquisition by Salesforce. He’s led product development at Bay Area start-ups and media companies, including WIRED.
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