Australian marketing technology (MarTech) platform Outfit has attracted a $1 million investment from the Microequities Venture Capital Fund, which will see the Brisbane startup create ten new jobs to further expand its national customer base and break into the US market by the end of the year.
Touted as ‘Canva for enterprise,’ Outfit’s cloud technology digitises brand guidelines to automate and scale the production of marketing collateral, ensuring it is always on brand. For large enterprise clients, Outfit makes the production of marketing collateral up to 90 per cent faster, while at the same time reducing costs by up to 65 per cent.
Outfit was founded in 2014 as a groundbreaking solution to the complex design needs of Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions. The Australian brand automation platform built by NetEngine now counts some of the nation’s leading universities and franchise groups as clients – two sectors with notoriously costly marketing output.
What will Outfit use this funding for?
The capital raised will be used to recruit top sales, customer service and product development talent over the next six months, doubling Outfit’s headcount. The company also plans a US launch with the opening of a Seattle office before the end of the year.
Spending on MarTech is poised to reach $32.3 billion in 2018, following an anticipated 12.4 per cent compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2018.
Howard Leibman, co-founder of Equity Venture Partners and a member of the Microequities Venture Capital Fund investment committee, will be joining the Outfit board.
“Brand automation represents a significant global market opportunity and Outfit is at the forefront of innovation in the area,” Mr Leibman said.
“Outfit provides a best-in-class platform and solves a very real problem – how to efficiently manage multi-location, multi-channel marketing collateral at scale.
“In a little over a year since launch, Outfit has attracted a broad cross section of customers and is closing in on $1 million in annual revenues. This has been achieved without any external investment to date – testament both to the strength of the Outfit product and to the exceptional ability of Bruce and his team.”
What does this funding mean for Outfit?
Outfit founder Bruce Stronge said the investment was a validation from one of Australia’s leading venture capital firms.
“More than an investment, this is a strategic partnership to build on our vision for Outfit and take it to global markets. Howard and his team have backed some of Australia’s most successful SaaS companies, including Siteminder and Deputy. Their experience helping technology companies to scale, along with their networks within the US investment community will be of immense benefit,” Mr Stronge said.
“As businesses see their brands expand to new geographies, and across a growing number of online and offline channels, building and protecting a strong brand is both more important, but also more expensive than ever.
“Outfit is an elegant solution to a global problem. Rather than replacing designers, Outfit frees them from menial tasks and allows them to focus on what they do best – developing great creative concepts, rather than endlessly resizing documents. With Outfit, designers create once and watch their beautiful designs scale across multiple media formats.”
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