Conductor raises $150M at a $525M valuation to build out its search-based, organic marketing technology - TechCrunch

Conductor — a marketing technology company that was snapped up by WeWork at the height of the latter company’s expansion ambitions, only then to buy itself out in the wake of WeWork’s collapse — has raised its first round of funding as a once-again independent startup. It has picked up $150 million, money that it will be using to continue investing in its technology and building out its business: an organic marketing platform aimed at SEO, content and web marketing teams, leveraging insights from search traffic to help build more accurate marketing strategies.

Conductor’s CEO and co-founder Seth Besmertnik has confirmed to us that the deal — led by Bregal Sagemount, with other investors not being disclosed — was made at a $525 million post-money valuation. Relatively speaking, that is a big leap considering that the management buyout he led for himself and others at the company was made at a price of $3.5 million, according to data from PitchBook.

About half of the investment, he said, would be in the form of secondary shares that are going to the employee-owners of the business; and half is new equity to put into the business.

For those who might not be familiar with Conductor’s backstory, here’s a brief summary, since it’s relevant to what the startup is doing today:

Conductor’s appeal to WeWork back in 2018 was based in part around WeWork already being one of Conductor’s big customers. The highly-capitalised WeWork was using Conductor’s marketing technology to figure...

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