Estonia's Pipedrive raises $9 million to bolster its online CRM software (video interview + photos)

As we're ramping up the business side of things over here at tech.eu (get in touch to advertise or partner up with us!), we've recently become happy paying customers of Pipedrive, a cloud-based software application that makes keeping track of sales online a breeze.

Yesterday, the Estonian company that builds the tool announced that it has raised a significant $9 million in funding from new and existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Paua Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners and AngelPad.

Prior to this round, Pipedrive raised $4.4 million in seed funding.

As it happens, I was in Tallinn this week for the (rather cool) Latitude59 conference, and I seized the opportunity to swing by Pipedrive's (rather cool) offices and have a chat with its head of product, Martin Henk – you can watch the video interview above and photos below.

Henk is one of the five co-founders of Pipedrive, which targets small and medium-sized businesses who sell products with long sales cycles. Refreshingly, the young company doesn't pretend that it's threatening Salesforce (or at least not yet), but what it does – and does well, in my experience – is provide SMEs with a major step up from using spreadsheets to manage leads and sales conversations.

The company has over 10,000 paying customers today, serviced by a team of close to 80 people spread across Tallinn and an office in San Francisco (where the startup participated in the AngelPad accelerator a few years back). The fresh cash is going to be used to bolster its product, primarily by enhancing the mobile experience and make the creation of detailed reports easier for its users.

But Henk says recruiting more people is also on the roadmap.

In a panel conversation at Latitude59, moderated by yours truly, Henk was candid about the fact that Pipedrive has already received quite a bit of acquisition interest over the past few years. Asked whether Salesforce – the giant in this space - has come knocking already, Henk said they had not and that they were very unlikely to engage in acquisition talks with the American company if they had.

Now at #Latitude59 @pipedrive sharing how they raised their 9m round from Russia, Europe, Brazil & US #Estonianmafia pic.twitter.com/Fe5AL8k4iF

— ArcticStartup (@arcticstartup) May 14, 2015

Armed with an extra $9 million to ramp up marketing efforts and accelerate product improvements, it may never need to.