‘Content Rules the World’ Startup Zesty.io Tops Off $2.8 Million to Advance Web CMS Innovation

SAN DIEGO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fast-forwarding web content management systems (WCMS), Zesty.io today announced the startup has topped off $2.8 million in funding with the addition of $1.5 million in fresh equity raise to capitalize on a multi-billion dollar market opportunity. The new round was led by ClearVision Equity Partners, a micro-cap equity firm that provides strategic capital and sophisticated resources to emerging and growth-oriented companies.

“Zesty.io is one of the most solidly positioned startups in our portfolio”

“Content rules the world,” said Randy Apuzzo, founder of Zesty.io. “It influences consumer habits, political decisions and business insights. People make decisions based on the content they consume every day.”

“Marketers need to avoid shiny objects and just get their content messages to the customer — easily, quickly and efficiently,” said Gerry Widmer, CEO at Zesty.io. “We are bringing software to market that marketers desperately need.”

Zesty.io is already accelerating the creation, distribution and management of content for marketers at leading consumer brands, including Sony Electronics, Acorns.com, Rocket League, Astroglide and Hofbräuhaus. The Zesty.io SaaS WCMS serves millions of requests per day globally. See a two-minute video that explains the value proposition for Zesty.io at www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aHVkKmfH0&feature=youtu.be.

Market Opportunity

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) and their marketing departments are under increasing strain to get their content out to customers across all channels — easily, quickly and affordably — despite a trend toward declining marketing budgets. According a recent survey from a leading market analyst firm, marketing budgets have fallen to 2015 levels, and a third of CMOs anticipate budgets will be cut or frozen. Yet, the market opportunity for WCM and enterprise content management (ECM) is projected to reach $67 billion by 2022.

“Zesty.io is one of the most solidly positioned startups in our portfolio,” said Hem Suri, founder and managing partner of ClearVision Equity Partners. “The company’s cutting-edge, efficient and secure solution has resonated well with big-name brands across a broad spectrum of industries and is uniquely positioned to scale toward a multi-billion dollar global market opportunity.

“Marquee customers have rapidly adopted, deployed and quickly derived benefits from the Zesty.io platform. And, they are now re-engaging Zesty.io at a deeper level to further enhance their marketing efforts,” added Suri.

Investment Partners and Google Grant

This seed round features key equity partners to help accelerate the company’s sales and marketing as well as its product development roadmap.

Through the latest round, ClearVision Equity Partners joins early investors:

• Andy Ballester, co-founder of GoFundMe
• Taner Halicioglu, co-founder of Seed San Diego and creator of Facebook hardware infrastructure
• Dave Hagewood, CEO at Psyonix, maker of popular game publisher Rocket League

Zesty.io was also selected for an important startup grant from Google to develop the Zesty.io platform infrastructure on Google Cloud. Noteworthy brands like Spotify, Snapchat and others got their start through similar grants.

“Zesty.io is a perfect blend of business and technical savvy,” said Andy Ballester, co-founder of GoFundMe and an early investor in Zesty.io. “They are building Zesty.io the smart way, taking a very measured approach to building the business, raising only the capital they need for the next phase of growth, attracting strategic investors and ensuring a sustainable growth trajectory.”

Zesty.io Platform

The Zesty.io Platform comprises an integrated, SaaS-based set of tools to quickly create digital assets like websites, landing pages and mobile data. The platform then provides a scalable and secure global distribution engine that allows marketers and developers to rapidly publish content to omnichannel touch points simultaneously. Its proprietary global infrastructure hosts web services that give marketing and development teams easy control over managing and organizing content, and a proprietary programming language makes designing content presentations a breeze.

Unique selling differentiators against a competitive landscape of traditional CMS and ECM platforms include:

• Global content assets and security
• Audit trail accountability
• Multisite and headless capabilities
• Greater agility and lower costs
• Web presentation layer

“Imagine robots publishing websites; this is where we are headed,” envisions Apuzzo. “However, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality and robotics will not replace the value of human involvement and oversight. These imminent technology advances are destined for the Zesty.io platform. They will further enable developers, designers and marketers to automate the creation, distribution and management of content, thus cost-efficiently increasing content volume, speed to market, quality control and security.”

For more information about Zesty.io, please visit www.zesty.io, and follow Zesty.io on Facebook.com/zestyio, LinkedIn.com/Zesty-io and @Zestyio.

About Zesty.io

Zesty.io is fast-forwarding the next generation of cloud-based web content management systems (WCMS) for marketers and developers of mid-market and enterprise organizations. With its 100 percent-native SaaS content management system (CMS), global customers like Sony Electronics, Acorn.com, Rocket League, Astroglide and Hofbräuhaus are speeding, scaling and securing global distribution and website management of digital content. Founded in 2010, Zesty.io is VC-funded and headquartered in San Diego, California. For more information about Zesty.io, please visit www.zesty.io, and follow Zesty.io on Facebook.com/zestyio, LinkedIn.com/Zesty-io and @Zestyio.

Zesty.io is a trademark of Zesty.io Platform, Inc. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Tags: Zesty.io, ClearVision Equity Partners, CMS, WCMS, ECM, SaaS, content management, digital transformation, marketer, web designer, developer, website management, digital content