Despite all the work done to improve screen-based interfaces, many people still have problems with websites and mobile apps. They are often unable to find the information they need or are bombarded with irrelevant content.FullStory is one of these startups. It has built a platform that can identify when it happens and offer suggestions to publishers to fix it. FullStory is now announcing a large round of funding. This is a sign that its ambitions are high and it's achieving them.The Series D round was closed by the Atlanta-based company for $103 million. This was an oversubscribed round which was actually still growing when I interviewed the company and published this story. (When we spoke last week, the total was $100 million). Permiras Growth Fund, which previously invested in customer experience startups such as Klarna or Nexthink, is leading this round. Previous investors Kleiner Perkins and Stripes, Dell Technologies Capital and Salesforce Ventures are also involved.FullStory has raised nearly $170 million so far. FullStory has confirmed that the company's investment value is $1.8 billion.Scott Voigt is FullStory's CEO and founder. He tells me that FullStory has approximately 3,100 customers paying currently. These customers include Peloton and the Financial Times. They also have JetBlue, VMware, JetBlue, and VMware. This means that FullStory will be racking up over 15 billion user sessions this fiscal year. That equates to 1 trillion interactions. According to FullStory, the annual recurring revenue has increased by more than 70% over the past year.He stated that the company will continue to invest in R&D to provide more real-time insight into its products and to pass those insights onto customers. Also, it plans to expand into Europe and Asia Pacific.FullStory is in direct competition with Decibel and Glassbox, but it claims that its tools are more visible on web sites than all three of its biggest competitors.FullStory employs machine learning algorithms to analyze the way people use websites and other digital interfaces. It works across multiple divisions, including customer success, product, marketing and engineering.It can track things such as when people click in certain areas too often due to delays or rage clicks. Or when a click takes them nowhere for some reason, like a jаvascript blip. It does not use or plan to use eye tracking. Or sentiment analysis about data customers provide, such as customer response windows.FullStory then compiles the insights it collects into data streams that can later be used with different visualization tools (having Salesforce in this regard is interesting, given that Salesforce owns Tableau), spreadsheets, or any other tool that a customer may choose to use them with. It doesn't offer immediate remediation, but it offers suggestions for other actions to address any problems.FullStory has seen a significant boost in recent years (this round represents the largest fundraise that the company has ever done). This is due to the fact that digital business is now the core of all business. Covid-19 and social distancing have reduced some of the traffic to in-person experiences such as shopping. Organizations that have built or natively developed digital experiences are seeing an unprecedented amount of traffic. They are joined by companies that have moved into digital experiences to keep their businesses afloat.This has led to an explosion in content online and a shift in mindset towards making it better. In the most pressing cases, even more basic, it has made it easier to use. Companies like FullStory have seen their stars align.Voigt explained that the category was still very young. He also spoke about the early days of FullStory, when selling digital experience insights meant selling to potential customers. Digital experience has become a major focus in the wake Covid-19. Voigt explained that the company's early days were characterized by selling potential customers on the idea of digital experience insights. This has helped FullStory grow.He said that customers often take their tools with their when they move jobs. FullStorys analytics is one example of such tools.FullStory is a great example of AI being used to structure data that might otherwise go unstructured. This has helped the world of analytics tremendously. Investors are attracted to FullStory's ability to take advantage of this trend and grow its business.We are thrilled to partner with FullStory as they continue expanding and building a truly exceptional technology brand that improves digital experience for all stakeholders," said Alex Melamud (Permira Growth's lead transaction officer) in a statement.Permira's Bruce Chizen, a senior advisor, stated that traditional analytics have been rewritten by AI-and ML-enabled methods that instantly reveal nuanced patterns or anomalies in customer behaviour. FullStory, which leverages both structured and unstructured information, has quickly established itself as a market leader in DXI. It is also the de facto system for all digital experience data. Chizen will join the FullStory Board in this round.
