ProsperWorks raises $24M Series B led by Next World Capital for its CRM solution built on the Google for Work platform
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
ProsperWorks' bet is that a CRM should be native to Google for Work rather than a standalone system, and Next World Capital's $24M Series B funds that thesis at a moment when mid-2010s enterprise SaaS rounds were flowing freely — Wrike's $15M Series B and BetterWorks' $20M Series C earlier the same year show the same investor appetite for workflow-adjacent tools.
First-order effects
- ProsperWorks gains the capital to scale its Google-centric CRM against established standalone CRM vendors, with Next World Capital now carrying the risk on a platform-dependent product strategy.
Second-order effects
- The follow-on validates the approach: within a year Norwest leads a larger Series C, with GV's participation signaling that Google's own investment arm sees value in the Google for Work application layer.
Third-order effects
- If platform-native apps keep attracting top-tier rounds, the CRM category splits into vendors that own their stack and those that ride an incumbent cloud's distribution — a dependency trade-off other Google for Work developers will face too.
The trend: Enterprise SaaS funding is consolidating around applications built natively on incumbent cloud platforms, with the platforms' own investors eventually underwriting the ecosystem.