Will Productboard IPO? 1,000th Startup to Become a Unicorn
Product management software Productboard is officially the 1,000th startup to become a unicorn. Will Productboard IPO? Here's what investors can expect.
Feb. 10 2022, Published 11:41 a.m. ET
Following the recent funding round, product management software company Productboard Inc. has officially reached unicorn status—or a startup worth at least $1 billion. Some investors are hungry to trade the stock, but Productboard hasn’t gone through an IPO yet.
Will Productboard IPO? If not, what’s next for the SaaS (software-as-a-service) company in a growth-minded e-commerce landscape?
Productboard is the 1,000th startup to become a unicorn.
On Feb. 2, Productboard completed a Series D funding round worth $125 million. CEO Hubert Palan announced to his team via a Zoom call that the company had achieved a $1.7 billion enterprise valuation.
At that time, CB Insights shared that the company was the 1,000th privately held startup to ever achieve a $1+ billion valuation (become a unicorn).
The collective unicorn market has grown exponentially in recent years. The total number of unicorns jumped by 70 percent in 2021 alone. This is largely due to a rise in venture capital. Last year, global funding jumped 111 percent YoY to reach $621 billion.
As of Feb. 10, the total unicorn valuation is about $3.3 trillion.
How much funding does Productboard have?
According to Crunchbase, Productboard has earned a total of $261.7 million in funding over its lifetime. The latest round, a Series D that propelled the company to unicorn status, was led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management.
Tiger Global also led the previous round, a Series C on April 22, 2021, that raked in $72 million.
Dragoneer partner Christian Jensen discussed Productboard. He said, “Some of our portfolio companies started using Productboard, and the difference was night and day. The world is moving towards customer centricity, and we finally have a data-driven system of record to help product managers and stakeholders across the organization determine and manage product direction.”
Daniel Hejl and Hubert Palan founded the company in 2014 out of Silicon Valley. Now, Productboard boasts clients like Zendesk (ZEN), Microsoft (MSFT), and UiPath (PATH), all of which are public companies.
What is Productboard all about?
Productboard lets users connect backlogs with up-to-date roadmaps and prioritize features based on user insights and company priorities. It also captures and centralizes customer feedback.
Productboard lets teams congregate in a public portal and supports premium integrations and APIs (application programming interfaces).
Will Productboard IPO after hitting unicorn status?
Last year, more than 1,000 companies went public through traditional IPOs or reverse mergers. Many of these companies were in the startup tech sector, like Affirm (AFRM), Clear (YOU), and Monday.com (MNDY).
Right now, Productboard executives seem to be focusing on celebrating their latest win rather than looking toward an IPO. In an announcement last week, Palan discussed how important growth is to Productboard and the industry at large.
Palan wrote, “We will scale our product offerings for Productboard’s broad base of customers while continuing our move upmarket to serve product leaders and more complex enterprise product organizations. Our latest round will also fuel hiring to support our rapid growth.”
Palan added that Productboard will continue to build its community of product makers and amplify stories of everyday makers pursuing excellence.
