Loom, which equips enterprises with instant video messaging tools, raises $11M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, says it's signed up 1.1M users from 18,000 firms
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many emails can you replace with a video? As offices fragment into remote teams … Tweets: @joshconstine , @ilyaf , and @kleinerperkins Tweets: Josh Constine / @joshconstine : Snapchat Stories for enterprise? Loom just raised $11M from Kleiner Perkins to replace emails with videos http://techcrunch.com/... Ilya Fushman / @ilyaf : 1/ The modern workplace is becoming increasingly distributed. People working across different time zones and the needs for richer communication (like video) are driving the need for better collaboration tools across the board. http://twitter.com/... Kleiner Perkins / @kleinerperkins : Today's modern business requires different methods for workers to work together. @useloom has raised an $11M Series A to continue fueling ongoing growth in the enterprise, and rolls out Loom Desktop and Loom Pro for business users! Read more in @TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This $11M Series A is the origin point of a four-year arc that ends with Atlassian paying roughly $975M for Loom. The ~$975M Atlassian acquisition in late 2023, at 25M+ users, traces directly back to the 1.1M-user base from 18,000 firms that Kleiner Perkins is underwriting here.
The round also set the fundraising cadence: Sequoia led a $30M Series B nine months later, and a16z pushed the valuation to $1.53B by mid-2021 — with Ilya Fushman's stated thesis about distributed teams needing richer communication becoming the sector's standard pitch.
First-order effects
- Loom gains the capital to push Loom Desktop and Loom Pro beyond its consumer-style free tier, converting the 18,000-firm base into paying business accounts.
- Kleiner Perkins buys early position in asynchronous video messaging just as remote-team fragmentation makes email replacement plausible.
Second-order effects
- Sequoia's follow-on Series B within the year signals top-tier funds treating async video as a distinct category rather than a feature, raising the bar for rivals seeking capital.
- An adjacent layer forms around the same behavior: Rewatch raises $20M from Andreessen Horowitz to index, transcribe, and store enterprise video — suppliers emerging to serve content Loom-style tools create.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, standalone async-video tools get absorbed into collaboration suites rather than staying independent — Atlassian's cash-heavy buyout being the proof case — while the category also demonstrates the boom-bust rhythm of SaaS scaling, as seen in Loom's 14% layoff between its peak valuation and its exit.
The trend: Asynchronous video messaging is moving from venture-funded standalone tools toward consolidation inside enterprise collaboration platforms.