5 Years In. Axial Raises $11M in Series B.

We’ve got some exciting news to share today. We recently closed an $11 million financing round led by Comcast Ventures; our major existing investors, Redpoint Ventures and First Round, also participated.

Five years in, the Axial network now stands at 19,500 members, reflecting 300% member growth since our 2012 series A financing. The network isn’t just growing; Members are making more connections and closing more transactions each month than ever (52,000 new connections monthly, 200 new deals a week, and about 100 closed deals a month).

Our growing investor base

Finding and enlisting great long-term partners is something every young company hopes to accomplish. Comcast Ventures fits this bill as a seasoned technology investor with tremendous online media expertise; we’re particularly excited to work with Sam Landman, who now joins our board.

In this financing round, we were also fortunate to be welcoming one of Axial’s most tenured members, Tom Courtney of The Courtney Group. After working at Morgan Stanley and Alex Brown, Tom started The Courtney Group in 1995. We asked Tom if he’d go on the record about his experiences as a customer of Axial and this is what he had to say: “At my firm, Axial has substantially grown our deal flow. We have access to more and better opportunities than we did before, and most of the transactions we have pursued on Axial were with people we did not know previously. I cannot imagine why anyone running or financing private companies would not want to be a member of Axial.”

Where we are investing

We’ll be investing the new capital in two specific areas: network growth and product excellence.

On the network side, we will focus on growing the depth and diversity of the network. Our focus is on building a member base not only composed of investors and M&A professionals, but one that also includes CEOs running private companies, middle market lenders, and corporate acquirers around the globe. Building this network is one of the most powerful ways we can help our members.

On the software side, we are laser focused on big improvements that make the platform faster, richer, and easier to use. Some recent launches include Network Search, Company Profiles, a Private Company Valuation Tool, and News Feed.

We’re also hiring. There isn’t a single great company large or small that didn’t first build a great team. “Axialites,” as we call ourselves, hail from all different types of companies, from leading technology companies, interesting startups, and financial organizations that have exposed them to the problems we’re solving both for entrepreneurs and the private capital markets community. We hire smart, ambitious, friendly people and seek to give them open-ended opportunities to grow, lead, and win.

We’re connecting. Off the platform, we’re giving members an opportunity to connect with each other in person. We’re doubling the number of events we will do next year, going to new cities, helping members connect their offline activities to online technologies, and hosting our first ever one-day conference, Axial Concord, in September.

Five years in, it feels like we are really picking up speed, like we are just beginning to make a meaningful scale impact on the lives of entrepreneurs and the professionals who finance and advise them.  We see tremendous opportunities to help connect our members and connect the entire entrepreneurial economy.  Now that we’ve completed the financing, we’re excited to get back to work.  We appreciate the confidence and capital that our members and our investors put in us, and we intend to deliver.

Related posts

• Press release on the announcement
• Fortune article on Term Sheet