Why We Invested Again: CreativeX (CX) Series B
CreativeX have just completed a significant $25M Series-B funding round led by Guggenheim, a global investment firm headquartered in the US. Conviction VC are delighted to announce that we participated in this round and the following article explains our reasoning for doing so and the history of our relationship with the company.
CreativeX was established in 2015 with dual headquarters in London and New York. The business uses artificial intelligence to scan the images and videos of advertising content to help Brands gain insights on their creative content’s performance and brand compliance. Since day 1, CreativeX has been able to look at organic content and the vision is to be able to analyse “any creative, anywhere”. The business is led by Anastasia Leng (CEO), a second time founder with over 20 years of industry experience.
The following image explains how CX sees a creative asset:
History of our investment journey
Conviction VC (CVC) first met Anastasia back on the 11th July 2018 (we remember the exact date as it coincidentally happened to be the day of the World Cup Semi Final between England & Croatia). At this time the business was raising its Seed round and went by the name “Picasso Labs”. The tag line for the company was “Automating creative decision-making at scale”. The company had developed clever technology and won some blue-chip clients. But at the time, revenue was primarily project based and not pure SaaS, thus didn’t hit our criteria for investment. However, it was firmly added to our watchlist and we kept up a regular dialogue with Anastasia ahead of the subsequent funding rounds.
Over the next 1–2 years the business transitioned to Enterprise SaaS. The technology was adapted to focus on brand consistency and regulatory compliance and they demonstrated product market fit with multinational consumer packaged goods companies. Subsequently, Conviction VC invested in the Series A funding round in March 2020. By then, the company had an impressive roster of clients including the likes of Google and Unilever and the SaaS metrics were equally as impressive as the business successfully migrated to fully recurring revenues.
As the business continued to grow, Conviction VC maintained a close relationship with Anastasia and her leadership team. We enjoyed regular catchups and were able to offer advice on all things fundraising. This included offering advice on the multiple term sheets the business received for their latest Series B round. The company chose to partner with Guggenheim, an institutional investment firm based in the US. Conviction VC participated in the Series B funding round and we are delighted with how the company has been performing.
As an example of the impact CX deliver to brands, the latest case study with Nestlé was released this week. They achieved a significant increase in Return On Ad Spend (+66% ROAS on Meta) through adopting the CreativeX technology at scale. Check out the case study here: https://www.creativex.com/casestudies/nestle
Series B Investment Thesis
There were a number of parameters that allowed us to build a strong investment thesis for the Series B funding round. Most importantly, we have known Anastasia for the best part of 4 years and were very impressed with her execution to date. Anastasia is a second time founder and had a 5+ year tenure at Google where she worked on every ad tech and analytics product in her time there.
As early stage venture capital investors, we are always on the lookout for excellent founders as they are the driving force behind any start-up organisation. Anastasia has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills, with the business having expanded from a team of 15 to 75, and the company consistently hitting their forecast numbers.
We are delighted at the performance of the business. CreativeX has consistently landed blue chip customers and has a proven strategy to expand these accounts with 4 clearly defined product offering. This generates very strong KPIs including revenue growth, retention and up-sell / cross-sell metrics. The product is inherently sticky and if the business continues to grow on its current trajectory, we believe this could be a business that generates $100m+ revenues in the not too distant future!
Conviction are pleased to have invested in this round and are optimistic for a long and successful journey with Anastasia and the rest of the CreativeX team.
If you are reading this and are a company founder operating within the B2B SaaS space please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at charlie@conviction-vc.com
Thanks!
