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Lytics CEO and co-founder James McDermott. (Lytics Photo)
Contentstack, an Austin-based company that helps brands store content and create personalized digital experiences, announced the acquisition of Lytics, a Portland, Ore.-based startup that spent the past 11 years building out a customer data platform.
The deal will allow Contentstack to take advantage of Lytics’ technology that helps marketers use real-time engagement data and customer insights.
Lytics targets retail, media, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) verticals. Customers include Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Glassdoor, Universal Music Group, Live Nation, and others.
The company raised $58 million to date, including a $35 million round in 2019.
Erik Benson, managing director at Seattle venture firm Voyager Capital, an early investor in Lytics, called the acquisition “very good” for shareholders.
“Voyager’s investment thesis was that building a system of engagement for first-party customer data was going to reign supreme over third-party data and retargeting systems prevalent at the time,” Benson said.
Founded in 2018, Contentstack is one of several so-called “headless CMS vendors.” It raised an $80 million Series C round in 2022.
Benson said Contentstack has “one of the most impressive management teams I’ve seen in over 25 years as a VC.”
“Truly personalized digital experiences require a marriage of scalable content management and actionable first-party data, wherever it lives, operating in real time,” Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack, said in a statement. “This is why combining Contentstack and Lytics makes so much sense for brands who are building the world’s best digital experiences.”
Lytics has 26 employees and all will join Contentstack.
James McDermott, who co-founded Lytics and led the company as CEO, will become Contentstack’s new global head of data products.
McDermott founded Lytics with former CTO Aaron Raddon, who left last year.
Lytics’ competitors include Seattle startup Amperity and Usermind, a Seattle startup acquired by Qualtrics in 2021.
