CrowdSource, a leader in enterprise-level managed crowdsourcing solutions, announced today a $12.5 million Series A funding round led by Highland Capital Partners. Corey Mulloy, general partner at Highland Capital Partners, has joined CrowdSource’s Board of Directors.
Launched publicly in June 2011, CrowdSource uses its 500,000 workers to provide full-service crowdsourcing solutions to accomplish labor-intensive tasks at scale, such as content creation and structuring big data. With its first round of funding, CrowdSource plans to expand their product set, grow their community of workers, and invest in sales and marketing.
“The investment from Highland Capital Partners will allow us to further capitalize on the rapidly growing market for scalable labor solutions by adding resources to our team and expanding our offerings,” said Stephanie Leffler, CrowdSource Co-Founder and CEO. “Highland is committed to our vision and brings an outstanding network of resources to help us accelerate our growth.”
Since its inception, CrowdSource and its on-demand workers have completed over 25 million tasks. The company attributes its growth to a focus on providing a pre-qualified, skilled workforce to its customers, 90% of which live in the United States and 65% of which have bachelor’s degrees or higher. To promote loyalty and continuous high-quality work, CrowdSource employs a virtual career system that rewards top-performing workers with higher pay, bonuses, awards and access to more work.
“The team at CrowdSource has built an unbelievable technology and has achieved very impressive results in a short period of time,” said Corey Mulloy, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners. “With its leadership position, innovative culture and strong team, we see huge growth potential in CrowdSource as it offers its specialized solutions to enterprise customers and brings much-needed innovation to traditional labor practices.”
About CrowdSource:
CrowdSource delivers scalable solutions to enterprise clients worldwide. Using a distributed workforce, clients receive high-quality, cost-effective results at unprecedented speed. By leveraging pre-qualified groups of skilled workers, breaking complex tasks into microtasks and employing quality-controls, CrowdSource eliminates the most common business problems. CrowdSource is headquartered in St. Louis and backed by Highland Capital Partners. For more information, visit www.crowdsource.com.
About Highland Capital Partners:
Highland Capital Partners was founded in 1988 with the mission of helping great people build great companies. With over $3 billion of committed capital and offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, Geneva, London and Shanghai, Highland has invested in and worked to create such firms as Ask Jeeves, Avid Technology, CheckFree, Conor Medsystems, Coremetrics, lululemon athletica, Lycos, MapQuest, Navic Networks, Ocular Networks, Odyssey Healthcare, P.A. Semi, Qihoo 360, Quattro Wireless, Quigo, Starent Networks, Sybase, Telica, Vertica and VistaPrint. For more information, visit Highland’s web site at www.hcp.com.
