Invoca Adds Veteran Public Company CEO in Preparation for 2017 IPO

Mark Woodward joins Invoca having led two publicly-traded software companies - E2open and Serena Software - both to billion dollar valuations

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Invoca

Jun 25, 2015, 09:00 ET

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., June 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Invoca, the leader in call marketing automation, announced today that it has hired Mark Woodward as CEO to drive the explosive growth and scale of the business in preparation for what it expects will be a 2017 IPO.

Invoca will exit 2015 having grown SaaS revenue 100 percent year-over-year, more than 650 percent over the prior three years, and on track to double again in 2016. The phone call-based marketing automation and analytics company has seen a rapid acceleration in growth in recent years as smartphone adoption and the mobile marketing explosion collectively drive tens of billions of additional phone calls to businesses every year. Now with more than 150 employees and offices in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Boulder, Invoca has driven more than $5 billion in revenue for its customers, which include leading enterprise brands like Allstate, DirecTV, SunTrust, and Mitsubishi. Invoca is on the Inc. 500 list as one of the country's fastest-growing software companies.

Woodward is an experienced public SaaS company CEO having led E2open through its IPO and to a valuation of nearly $1 billion. As CEO of publicly traded Serena Software, Woodward grew revenue to $300 million and orchestrated an eventual sale in excess of $1 billion. He also ran North American sales for Legent Corporation, growing sales from $28 million to $700 million, and contributing to the company's sale to CA for nearly $2 billion. Woodward held earlier executive positions within McAfee and Oracle.

Woodward's appointment was initiated by Invoca founder and current CEO Jason Spievak, who will remain full-time with the company running strategy, corporate development and business development as the company's executive vice president and chairman.

"I was the right guy to start Invoca and lead it to a sustainable business doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue," said Spievak. "And at our current growth rate, I want a partner with the experience of scaling to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. When I met Mark, I knew we had found the right leader for this next chapter of our rapid growth and global expansion."

"With mobile phones now such a significant part of how we all live our lives, it's no wonder that Invoca has grown at the rate that it has," said Woodward. "It's so rare to have the opportunity to join a company as CEO that not only has such a big vision, but that also retains the full support of its founders and possesses such a great roster of management, investors and board members. I'm excited to help lead the next phase of this great SaaS company."

Mark Suster, managing partner at Upfront Ventures, led the first institutional investment in the company. "Invoca was my first investment as a venture capitalist, and I couldn't be more excited to be entering this next stage of expansion and scale with an eye toward the public markets," Suster says. "I've worked closely with Jason for six years and watching him add such an experienced CEO as Mark Woodward is really a testament to Jason's ultimate leadership skills and the massive opportunity that exists ahead for the company."

Invoca was founded to close a multi-billion dollar hole in existing marketing cloud solutions: when customers use their mobile devices to call a business, marketers are left without the analytics and automation that they rely on for other digital marketing channels. This problem continues to grow in magnitude as the path to purchase shifts increasingly to the smartphone. According to Google, 70 percent of mobile searchers call a business directly from search results. Analyst firm BIA Kelsey predicts that mobile search alone will drive more than 70 billion calls to businesses by 2018.

Invoca's SaaS platform is used by hundreds of enterprise brands across verticals like financial services, communications, insurance, travel, technology, and automotive to increase revenue by making calls as measurable and automated as clicks. With Invoca, marketers can measure which campaigns are driving calls, automatically score and route callers to the right destination, and even trigger the next best action in platforms including Adobe, Salesforce, Google, Eloqua, Kenshoo, and Hubspot, as well as into a wider ecosystem of data management platforms, affiliate networks, and agency partners.

Invoca has raised more than $30 million in venture capital from leading funds including Accel Partners, Upfront Ventures and Rincon Venture Partners. The company continues to strengthen its management team with leaders from Salesforce, Microsoft, Eloqua/Oracle, Responsys/Oracle, and Silverpop/IBM, as well as its board with senior industry executives from Salesforce and Omnicom.

About Invoca
Invoca helps the modern marketer drive inbound calls and turn them into sales. By bringing call intelligence to marketers and their existing marketing technology systems, Invoca's platform delivers the visibility required to engage mobile customers beyond the click. Invoca has powered more than $5 billion in sales for its customers and is backed by Accel Partners, Upfront Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, and Salesforce. For more information, please visit www.invoca.com.

About Accel
Accel is a leading early and growth-stage venture capital firm powering a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel backs entrepreneurs who have what it takes to build a world-class, category-defining business. Founded in 1983, Accel brings more than three decades of experience building and supporting hundreds of companies. Accel's vision for entrepreneurship and business enables it to identify and invest in the companies that will be responsible for the growth of next-generation industries. Accel has backed a number of iconic global platforms that are powering new experiences for mobile consumers and the modern enterprise, including Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Slack, Spotify, VSCO and others. For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at accel.com, or on Facebook at facebook.com/accel.

About Upfront Ventures
Upfront Ventures is the largest and longest-serving venture capital fund in Los Angeles having invested more than $1 billion since 1996 in companies such as Maker Studios, TrueCar, Envestnet and Overture. While Upfront is a national investment firm, it invests at least 50 percent of its capital in LA-based technology companies. You can learn more at http://www.Upfront.com.

About Rincon Venture Partners
Rincon Venture Partners invests in California-based B2B Internet software businesses that are founded by experienced and cohesive teams and have proven, recurring revenue streams. Rincon's partners combine deep operating expertise with decades of professional investing experience to provide entrepreneurs with "full-stack" guidance and support. The firm typically leads or co-leads a startup's first equity round, and aspires to be founders' most trusted advisor. Learn more at www.rinconvp.com.

For more information please contact:

Sarah Spitz: Bateman Group, [email protected], Phone (347) 382-9731

SOURCE Invoca