Announcing our $7.5M raise to build the future of brand marketing
Written by
We’re excited to announce that we have raised $7.5 NZD million in a seed round led by BlackbirdOpens in new tab, Icehouse VenturesOpens in new tab, AscentialOpens in new tab, Shasta VenturesOpens in new tab and marketing legend Mark RitsonOpens in new tab have also taken part in the round to supercharge our next phase of growth.
Blackbird understands the power of investing in brand and is backing us with a $4 million investment. Having invested in Canva from its earliest round in 2012, Blackbird is now the largest external investor in the company.
“Strong brands are the difference between good companies and great companies – whether they're selling physical products or software,” Principal at Blackbird Phoebe Harrop says.
“The magic of Tracksuit is giving companies across every industry a common language for measuring, talking about and investing in brand health. We're delighted to partner with the Tracksuit team as they empower marketers across the globe with their product and create a new category of data-driven brand awareness."
After being bootstrapped for our first 20 months of business, this round marks our first external investment and values Tracksuit at $45 million NZD.
Our journey so far
Tracksuit was founded in 2021 by our co-CEOs Matt Herbert and Connor Archbold in partnership with TRA LabsOpens in new tab, the venture studio arm of premier insights agency TRAOpens in new tab and innovation and venture studio Previously UnavailableOpens in new tab.
Through this partnership, Tracksuit was built using best-in-class market research and brand strategy methodology. Our affordable and always-on brand tracking has taken the market research model and made it 10x easier to understand and 10x more affordable.
This means businesses now have the power to make data-driven decisions around brand marketing at a fraction of the cost of traditional brand tracking.
“Our vision is for Tracksuit to be used in every strategic growth conversation for the best consumer brands of today and tomorrow,” Connor says. “We exist to be the common language to measure, understand and communicate the value of brand building.”
Matt and Connor previously had worked together at Mish GuruOpens in new tab, where Herbert was Head of Business Development and Archbold was Chief Operating Officer.
“I’ve loved building Tracksuit with Matt. We challenge each other in the best ways and we share a vision and passion for creating a team and workplace that is both highly effective and highly empathetic. We want to change the world and we hope that one of the ways we'll do that is by showcasing a very human and team-centric way to build a billion-dollar-business from New Zealand,” Connor says.
Since our launch in early 2021, we’ve now grown to 23 full-time employees and are now tracking more than 1300 brands across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
“When we started Tracksuit 20 months ago, we built a cash-flow positive, bootstrapped business,” Matt Herbert says. “When the demand for our product skyrocketed, we went into investor conversations with confidence knowing we had the backing of an incredible team and strong metrics.
“The level of immediate demand for Tracksuit is indicative of the shift in consumer businesses, who are focusing less on immediate conversion and more on building long-term growth through highly effective, creative marketing.”
We’re chuffed to be the chosen brand tracking solution for more than 180 consumer brands and some of the world’s best brand leaders, including EucalyptusOpens in new tab Head of Brand Marketing Matt Rossi (AU), AllpressOpens in new tab Global Brand Lead Rob Lockyear (NZ) and charity: waterOpens in new tab VP of Marketing Brady Josephson (US).
“I was impressed by Tracksuit’s always-on approach to brand tracking,” Matt Rossi says.
“With surveys constantly in-market and live dashboards that enable you to slice data in multiple ways, you can extract real-time insights to help measure the success of marketing interventions, or inform focus areas to hone activity for future campaigns.”
“After our first call with Tracksuit we had a debrief and we were just silent for a moment and said, ‘This is perfect right?’ As a nonprofit, every dollar we can save matters,” charity: water VP of Marketing Brady Josephson says.
“Not just to our bottom line and performance for the people and communities we serve. So to be able to track and measure our brand for a fraction of the cost of other solutions was amazing. The fact that it’s always on and we get insights all year long made it a no brainer.”
We’ll be using this capital to fuel our growth into new markets and hire the best talent across our hubs in Auckland, Sydney, New York and London so that more companies are able to measure, understand and communicate the value of brand.
Interested in joining the Track team? We’re hiring across Marketing, Product, Tech, Customer, and Sales! Check out our open roles. If the role you’re after is not listed, get in touch – we’d still love to chat to talented humans about future opportunities.
