Autopilot (Bislr) Announces $10mn Funding

Marketing Automation Platform Autopilot, formerly Bislr,  recently announced it has raised $10mm Series B financing led by Rembrandt Venture Partners with participation from Southern Cross Venture Partners, Blackbird and personal investments from Tim Draper, and Terry & Katrina Garnett. As part of the funding round, Scott Irwin, Partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners will join the board of directors.

Autopilot was founded in late 2011 by the “Sharkey Brothers” – Michael, Peter, and Chris. The three Australian-born brothers were frustrated by the complexity and difficulty associated with setting up marketing technology in their previous startups.

Autopilot’s next wave marketing automation platform consolidates applications marketing teams use on a daily basis into powerful and easy to use “apps” hosted on a single platform. It removes the requirement for long implementations and the high cost of ownership typically associated with marketing automation software. By removing the complexity, Autopilot allows marketers to focus on the strategy and execution using agile marketing practices. This round of funding will be primarily invested in accelerating growth and product development.

“Innovation died out in the first wave of marketing automation software. It was heavily tethered to CRM and it’s main focus was around email marketing. It’s hard to use, takes months to implement and has an unjustified high cost of ownership. Today there is this exciting explosion of marketing technology that can help marketers outmaneuver their competitors, but the real problem is access to this technology,” said Michael Sharkey, CEO and co-founder of Autopilot. “We’re giving marketers an ecosystem to access this technology on an open platform with a consistent experience and interface that every marketer can easily use. Today we’ve built the first of these powerful apps and have a laser focus on making the technology more accessible to the wider market.”

Autopilot will open their marketing technology SDK to developers later this year, enabling marketing technologists access to a number of sophisticated APIs including Autopilot’s lead intelligence and automation applications. Developers will be able to deploy new and existing marketing technology to the Autopilot Marketplace with ease. Autopilot’s unique SDK will allow developers to modify core applications to customize and configure the software to meet the ever changing requirements of marketing.

Autopilot is the first marketing automation platform built with an open software development kit that provides marketers access to the next wave of marketing technology on a single platform – without the complication of complex integrations, the involvement of IT or expensive consultants. With ease, Autopilot allows marketers to focus on strategy and execution, which leads to a higher return on investment.

Autopilot’s platform today (including users of their popular targeted prospect building application Prospect Ace) has over 3,000 users and includes customers such as Microsoft, Nokia, Bosch, Voxer, Sol Republic, Cambium Networks, SendHub and Model N.