Vista Equity Partners funds Return Path

New York City-based Return Path, an e-mail data analytics firm, has raised $35 million in funding. Vista Equity Partners was the investor. In conjunction with the investment, Patrick Severson, a principal at Vista Equity Partners, has been added to Return Path’s board of directors.

PRESS RELEASE

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Email data analytics company Return Path announced today that it has secured a $35 million investment led by leading private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. The funding will support a significant expansion of Return Path’s sales and marketing capabilities as well as an acceleration of its product roadmap.

Return Path’s analytical insight enables more than 2,500 leading brands to gain visibility into the return on their marketing investments and their customers’ behavior. In recent years, the company has built on its global leading Email Optimization business with the launch of Email Fraud Protection, the industry’s leading security and brand protection solution. The Email Fraud Protection solution, developed with the needs of the Chief Information Security Officer in mind, is designed to eliminate the impact of email fraud. By analyzing data from its cooperative network of mailbox and security providers – representing 2.5 billion email accounts, approximately 70% of the worldwide total – Return Path delivers real-time threat intelligence to block phishing attacks and other abuse at the network perimeter. The company’s data assets and global network of gateway, application, and security partners enable Return Path to detect and mitigate threats beyond the scope of authentication-based solutions. Return Path today launched a website exclusively for security professionals at www.emailfraudprotection.com.

In addition, Return Path is adding analytic capabilities to enable its customers to better understand how consumers interact with competitors’ campaigns as well as how consumers spend their time and money by analyzing transactional trends from its fast-growing digital consumer data. Return Path will continue to invest in developing and bringing solutions based on these capabilities to market in 2015 to solve the most challenging business decisions of its fast growing customer base.

“As demand continues to rapidly expand, especially for our security and consumer intelligence offerings, this investment enables us to accelerate our roadmap and ramp up our sales power to take advantage of our leadership in email data-driven solutions across all our lines of business,” said CEO Matt Blumberg. “Return Path has a history of creating new opportunity through innovation, and we’re grateful to find in Vista Equity Partners a team with the vision and experience to help us capitalize on it given their impressive track record of investing in B2B software and data companies. This partnership will foster new opportunities for growth and success for years to come.”

Return Path has posted 40 consecutive quarters of revenue growth and now has more than 420 employees in 12 offices around the world, including New York; Sunnyvale, CA; Broomfield, CO; Austin, TX; Toronto; London; Paris; Munich; Sao Paulo; and Sydney. This year Return Path was ranked the #2 best medium-sized company to work for in the U.S. by Fortune magazine and was honored on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America for the 7th time.

As part of the investment, Patrick Severson, principal with Vista Equity Partners, will join Return Path’s Board of Directors. With over $14 billion in cumulative capital commitments, Vista Equity Partners focuses its investments in software, data and technology-enabled businesses. The private equity firm goes beyond traditional investing, providing multilevel support and professional expertise built on a foundation of proven best practices. Vista Equity Partners joins a syndicate of prominent investors in Return Path, including Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, Foundry Group, Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures), and Industry Ventures.

“Return Path is a premium business with a strong management team, unrivaled network of email data, clear ROI for enterprise marketing and security departments, and a large and rapidly growing market opportunity,” said Patrick Severson. “This is a truly unique company with great products that aligns perfectly with Vista’s strengths.”

About Return Path
Return Path analyzes the world’s largest collection of email data to show marketers how to stay connected to their audiences, strengthen their customer engagement, and protect their brands from fraud. Our solutions help mailbox providers around the world deliver great user experiences and build trust in email by ensuring that wanted messages reach the inbox while spam and abuse don’t. Consumers use Return Path technology to manage their inboxes and make email work better for them. Find out more about Return Path at www.returnpath.com.

About Vista Equity Partners
Vista Equity Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm with offices in Austin, Chicago and San Francisco, with more than $14 billion in cumulative capital commitments, currently invests in software, data and technology-enabled organizations led by world-class management teams with long-term perspective. Vista is a value-added investor, contributing professional expertise and multi-level support towards companies realizing their full potential. Vista’s investment approach is anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions, and proven management techniques that yield flexibility and opportunity in private equity investing. For more information, please visit www.vistaequitypartners.com.