How Martec Raised Series A

Summary

Scale Ventures worked closely with Raaj Govintharajah to ready The Martec for an institutional Series A. We built the financial rigour and led the restructure investors asked for mid-deal, without losing the timeline. The Martec raised more capital, on better terms, than Raaj had gone to market for.

How The Engagement Started

Pat met Raaj after speaking at an event on how SaaS leaders navigate CFOs through the sales process. Raaj came up afterwards with firing questions about a raise, what he wanted to do, and he had the kind of energy founders have when they can see the shape of the next phase.

The Business

The Martec is the AI powered content platform for employer branding and talent acquisition. Hubspot, KPMG, Marriott, IBM, Microsoft and Lloyds Bank all use it. Raaj had been part of building Salient into APAC’s largest SaaS focused tech recruitment firm, then started The Martec to apply marketing tech principles to talent. He’d built a great business, and by the time the raise opened, the business was growing 3.5x YoY across Australia, the UK and the US.

The financials had been built for a fast growing operating business, not for institutional Series A due diligence which was the support we provided.  

What We Did

Scale Ventures embedded alongside Raaj and his team to run the Series A. We architected the driver based model, the unit economics, and the SaaS metrics investors want to see. During negotiations, the investor group asked for changes to the entity, cap table, legal and tax structure. We led that restructure with Thomson Geer and Marque Lawyers, and held the deal timeline through it. Then we ran the deal side by side with Raaj seeing multiple term sheets, negotiation, and the legal and tax coordination through to funding.