 Pardot At a Glance
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When college buddies David Cummings and Adam Blitzer first joined forces to launch a new startup in 2007, the intent was to conduct bid arbitrage for pay-per-click lead generation. Less than two months into the venture, the Duke University grads realized there was a bigger business opportunity available – one involving the development of a comprehensive marketing platform to meet the needs of B2B marketers.
Fast forward five years and it’s clear the two co-founders of Pardot – named after a Latvian term that means “to market or sell” – embraced the appropriate business strategy. With a list of more than 1,000 clients and growing, the young company was recently named the 172nd fastest growing company nationwide by Inc. Magazine. They were also honored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2010 for being the fastest growing technology company in the Atlanta area.
“We’re in a small but rapidly growing market and our goal is to continue to grow significantly faster than the overall market,” said Cummings, a seasoned Atlanta entrepreneur behind the creation of several other local companies including Rigor, Clickscape, SalesLoft and Hannon Hill. “Our focus on ease of use as well as providing the best bang for the buck with outstanding customer service helps us stand out from the competition. One leading industry analyst gave us the highest marks for total cost of ownership.”
The ATDC member company provides cloud-based marketing automation software designed to increase revenue and maximize efficiency. It accomplishes this by providing a platform with CRM integration, email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, sales alerts, ROI reporting and social media/PPC/web analytics/webinar integration capabilities. Through this comprehensive suite, marketing and sales teams are better able to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and manage online campaigns.
To put things into perspective, company departments often use one main product for the bulk of their work, along with several secondary products: QuickBooks for accounting, Salesforce.com for sales. Pardot serves as the marketing platform of record for the marketing department.
With more than 100 employees and a corporate culture that embraces fun and creativity, Pardot’s growth doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The self-financed company recently received a significant line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank. The money will allow the small business-focused vendor to grow even faster.
With eyes on the future, Cummings said Pardot will continue to strive to be the “best place to work and the best place to be a customer.”
“It seems simple, but by getting those two things right, everything else takes care of itself,” he said. “We use those two things as our guiding principles in our decision-making process…We have more than 100 employees now, and our greatest accomplishment – across all fronts – was being named the number one place to work in Atlanta in 2012 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”