Robert Smith, CEO, Vista Equity Partners. Photo credit: World Economic Forum, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has announced that it’s reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Pipedrive, a sales CRM startup, in a deal that’s said to place Pipedrive’s valuation at $1.5 billion. The exact percentage of Pipedrive that Vista is acquiring isn’t disclosed but being a majority stake entails at least 50%. Vista notes that some current investors in Pipedrive such as Atomico and Insight Partners will retain minority stakes after its acquisition.

Pipedrive is a sales CRM platform that was founded 10 years ago in Estonia but later relocated to New York City in the US. As a privately-held company, it’s raised some $90 million in outside funding from a group of investors including well-known names like Atomico, Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, DTCP, and Rembrandt Venture Partners. 

Given that Vista is said to have taken a majority stake in Pipedrive at a $1.5 billion valuation, one can assume that the CRM company’s current investors have made lucrative profits from selling part of their stakes to the private equity firm. 

Pipedrive is a popular customer relationship management (CRM) software suite that’s built for salespeople and marketers. Vista’s investment in the company comes on the very same day that it announced leading a $100 million round for a cybersecurity startup, Menlo Security. Vista is a private equity firm with over $58 billion in capital under management and is a major powerhouse in the technology industry.

Throughout its history, Vista has made many splashy acquisitions and reaped big profits from some of its bets. The private equity firm usually invests large amounts for stakes in companies or buy them outright, being primarily focused on the technology industry. 

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