Monday, December 5, 2011

UTest taps backers for $17M Series D round

By Rodney Brown

Southborough software testing company uTest Inc. has raised $17 million in a Series D round of funding led by QuestMark Partners of Baltimore.

In a release put out by uTest, the company noted that previous backers Scale Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, Egan-Managed Capital and Mesco Ltd. participated in the new funding round, which brings the crowdsourced testing company’s total equity funding to $37 million since it was founded in 2007. Among the recent accomplishments the company touted in its release is a doubling of employee count since 2008, along with an increase in revenue of 250 percent since that year.

The new funds from the Series D round will be used to open new offices in areas that uTest has identified as being “app creation hotspots” like Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago, the release stated. In addition, uTest will look to further develop its crowdsourced testing platform and create new products for launching apps with the cash, and possibly recruit new employees or make acquisitions.

As part of the new financing deal, QuestMark partner Tim Krongard will join the uTest board of directors. In March, uTest shook up its C-level executive ranks, adding a new CFO in Ann Brady, CTO in Fumi Matsumoto and CMO in Matt Johnston. It followed that up a month later by teaming up with Mozilla to create a test case management system that will aid startups and smaller companies.

UTest raised a $13 million Series C round in September 2010, from Scale, Longworth, Egan-Managed Capital and Mesco, along with Series A investors Mass Technology Development Corp.