Powering the Ecosystem Economy: Crossbeam’s $76M Series C Led by Andreessen Horowitz

Over the past fifteen years as a B2B SaaS founder, I’ve watched as best practices and category-defining software products were invented and reinvented for nearly every user persona. But there was always one group left behind. 

Their titles contained words like “partnerships,” “alliances,” and “business development,” and they were responsible for building relationships and ecosystems that crossed company lines. The work they did contained enormous potential, but the gridlock of cross-company data collaboration made it nearly impossible to convert that potential into results — let alone measure and scale them. In my past companies, we called this “the partnership dilemma.”

We experienced this firsthand at my first company RJMetrics, and the more folks we talked to, the more we realized that we were not alone. So, three years ago, Buck Ryan and I decided to do something about it. We co-founded Crossbeam, the world’s first and most powerful partner ecosystem platform. 

We started with the best account mapping engine ever built — an “escrow service for data” that allows companies to see how their customers and sales pipelines overlap without oversharing information. That evolved into workflows for co-selling, coordination, collaboration, and measurement. Most recently, our Partner Cloud has integrated Crossbeam data with the platforms where go-to-market teams do their work every day. 

Today, three years and more than 5,000 companies later, Crossbeam has created a formidable new category of software and is at the forefront of its emerging market. All thanks to our amazing user community and the network effects at the core of our model.

The growing Crossbeam network

Among the thousands of businesses in our network, we’re proud to include over 300 of the SaaS 1000, hundreds of unicorns, and dozens of publicly traded companies. We’re especially grateful for amazing customers like Twilio, Procore Technologies, HubSpot, Productboard, Netlify and the many others who have allowed us to tell the story of how Crossbeam has helped turn their partner ecosystems into growth engines.

And today we’re thrilled to share news about a new partnership of our own. We’re announcing a $76M Series C funding round led by Sarah Wang and Jennifer Li from Andreessen Horowitz. Along with the exciting addition of the a16z team, we are humbled to have participation from:

So where do we go from here? As shown in our 2021 State of the Partner Ecosystem Report, the amount of energy, talent, dollars, and thought leadership pouring into our space is unprecedented. 

Our task is no longer to preach the virtues of partner ecosystems but also to empower those who embrace them. 

Ecosystem is Everything is no longer a tagline. It’s reality. We are entering an era where networked economies govern how and where companies experience growth. Our goal is to power that ecosystem economy. As for how we’ll get there and what you’ll see next, the best public roadmap is to simply revisit our company values:

If you’re interested in learning more, the best way to understand Crossbeam is to experience it. You can claim your company’s free account by registering here or click here to connect with a member of our team and see a demo. 

We’re honored and humbled to work with so many supportive, creative, and collaborative people, from our team to our users to our investor community. In the many exciting years ahead, we hope to make them all proud by building and leading an invaluable new class of software and creating a more connected business world. Now let’s get back to work.