G2 Crowd, the world's leading business software review platform, today announced that it has secured $7 million in Series A funding led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital with significant participation from existing investors Chicago Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Chairman Godard Abel, and G2 Crowd's management team. In addition, industry leaders Thomas Lehrman (GLG founder) from Haystack Partners and High Alpha with Managing Partner, Scott Dorsey (former ExactTarget co-founder/CEO) joined the round.

'Ninety percent of customers say they are influenced by online reviews, which speaks to the importance of social proof in today's purchase process'

G2 Crowd has rapidly become the leading business software review platform that transforms the buying experience by providing real-time insights based on peer reviews and social signals rather than on dated analyst opinions. G2 Crowd now features an unmatched 37,000-plus in-depth user reviews on thousands of business software products which are being read by more than 300,000 software buyers each month.

G2 Crowd will use the funding to extend its leadership and accelerate growth by hiring additional top talent to build out its buyer community. G2 Crowd also plans to invest in providing buyers with more unique insights from the rapidly growing mass of review content and social signals.

'G2 Crowd is rapidly becoming the key information source for any executive in the purchasing review phase of B2B software technologies,' said Adam Koopersmith, partner, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, who is also joining the G2 Crowd board. 'We're very impressed by the company's rapid growth and we're looking forward to partnering with the company's leadership team to help G2 Crowd scale and further drive awareness of the industry's increasing demand for expert peer advice.'

'By bringing the collective power of trusted peers to the forefront, business buyers now have transparency when evaluating B2B software technologies,' said Tim Handorf, co-founder and president, G2 Crowd. 'We're excited to use this investment to scale our platform, add more software categories with compelling reviews, and grow our awareness in the world of business software.'

According to BlueShift Research's June 2015 Trends Tracker Survey, 70 percent of consumers trust online reviews. While consumer goods reviews are plentiful, business buyers have traditionally been forced to rely on sales-coordinated referrals. G2 Crowd has found that professionals are active advocates of companies and products, but previously lacked channels to share what it's like to actually implement a solution in practice.

Similarly G2 Crowd intuitively packages insights from expert peers and everyday end users to give decision makers the real-world, situational context needed to make their purchase decisions with confidence. The G2 Crowd community is seeing direct impact on software providers as consumer workers use ratings and feedback to help drive innovation to transform work itself.

'Ninety percent of customers say they are influenced by online reviews, which speaks to the importance of social proof in today's purchase process,' said Mark Organ, CEO, Influitive. 'This need for authentic insight points to the value of advocate driven online reviews, especially when considering that peer recommendations make buyers five times happier with B2B software purchases. Plain and simple, advocacy infused online reviews are critical for driving purchase intent.'

About G2 Crowd, Inc.

G2 Crowd, the world's leading business software review platform, leverages its 37,000-plus user reviews read by 300,000 software buyers each month to help them make better purchasing decisions. Co-founded by the founder and former executives from SaaS leader BigMachines (acquired by Oracle) and backed by roughly $12 million in venture capital, G2 Crowd is bringing authenticity and transparency to business technology research. For more information, go to G2Crowd.com.

About Pritzker Group Venture Capital

Pritzker Group, led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker, has three principal investment teams: Private Capital, which acquires and operates leading North America-based companies; Venture Capital, which provides multi-stage venture funding to technology companies throughout the United States; and Asset Management, which partners with top-performing investment managers across global public markets.

Pritzker Group Venture Capital, formerly New World Ventures, helps entrepreneurs build market-leading technology companies at every stage of their growth. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has worked side-by-side with entrepreneurs at more than 100 companies, building partnerships based on trust and integrity. The firm's proprietary capital structure allows for tremendous flexibility, and its experienced team of investment professionals and entrepreneurs offers companies a vast network of strategic relationships and guidance. Successful exits in recent years include Fleetmatics (NYSE: FLTX), SinglePlatform (acquired by Constant Contact), Zinch (acquired by Chegg), Playdom (acquired by Disney), LeftHand Networks (acquired by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)), and TicketsNow (acquired by Ticketmaster (NASDAQ: TKTM)). For more information, visit pritzkergroup.com.