Howard Lerman raises $50 million in Series F funding for Yext

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Lerman is  CEO  and co-founder of Yext, a technology startup and geo -marketing company.

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Howard Lerman CEO and co-founder of Yext, a technology startup and eco-marketing company that enables businesses to  synchronize their data across local search services as well as their own websites, has announced that the company he helped found in 2009 has raised  $50 million in Series F funding.

The latest funding round was led by Insight Venture Partners, with other participants, including Marker, Institutional Venture Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.

Yext has now succeeded in raising in excess of  $115 million in venture capital, with its most recent, a total of $27 million Series E coming in January 2010, which at that time place the company’s values at around  $270 million. With the passing of more than four years, and thanks to the  Series F  funding round, according to industry sources, Yext has  now reached a market  value of around $525 million.

According to Howard Lerman, Yext will take advantage of  the $50 million in Series F funding to continue their extensive  research and development program, as well as expand their international frontiers, with plans to launch their  services  in strategic markets, beginning with Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and later reaching as far as Australia and all before the end of 2014.

Lerman went on to add in his statement after the latest funding round was announced,   that some of the capital enlisted could also be set aside for acquisitions.

Yext was initially launched as a pay-per-call advertising business, making its market debut at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2009. However through  the years the company has gradually shifted their marketing focus towards what they described as “geomarketing software”, eventually selling their pay-per-call advertising business to CityGrid Media, a member of the IAC group.

Yext  enjoyed income of $34 million in 2013, more than double what they achieved the previous year, and reportedly well on the way  to  achieving their  $55 million target for 2014,  thanks to the company now being trusted to  handle data for more than 300, 000 active locations throughout the United States.

Howard Lerman graduated from Duke University in 2002,  with a degree in  history.

Before forming Yelp, Lerman was involved in the successful formation of  two  separate  start-up ventures, all of which enjoyed  successful exits.

Howard Lerman’s  first startup, JustaTip.com  even got under way while he was still a student at Duke University, with his partners being two former high school classmates, Tom Dixon and Sean Maclsaac who both currently hold senior management positions on Yext. The trio sold  JustaTip.com   to Traffix, a publicly traded online marketer, for $150, 000 in 2001, whilst remaining intact as a team to form Intwine, a consulting firm  which the grew to reach annual turnovers of  $5 million, before selling out to  Daltran Media for $7 million in 2005.

Lerman, Dixon and MacIsaac’s next joint project was  GymTicket.com, a lead generation service that was originally formed to  direct health conscious individuals  to gyms in their area. The concept proved to be a tremendous success, and within a year, GymTicket.com had more than  3, 000 gyms across the United States using their services.

Expanding on the successful concept that they had developed, Howard Lerman and his partners began to offer their marketing services to  nine additional service sectors, among them  including LocalVets.com and TVRepairman.com, before . As the partners began to describe themselves, tongue in cheek,  as the  “next Yellow Pages”, the gradually condensed all of their various websites under a single marketing umbrella under the title of Yext .