uTest, the leader for in-the-wild software testing, announced on their corporate blog today that they have completed a $17 million Series D round of funding. The round was led by QuestMark Partners, with full participation from all of uTest's previous investors including Scale Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, Egan-Managed Capital and Mesco Ltd. This latest round brings the company's total funding to more than $37 million since its 2007 founding, and marks one of the largest investments ever made in a crowdsourcing company.

In the 15 months since uTest's $13 million C round, the company saw its valuation more than double. This sharp increase was driven by the rapid customer adoption of uTest's in-the-wild testing services and other contributing factors, including:

- Revenue increased 250% year-over-year since 2008
- Headcount grew by more than 100% year-over-year since 2008
- Blue-chip customer base that includes global brands like Google, Microsoft, Groupon, AOL and the BBC, as well as high-growth innovators such as Trulia, Tapulous, Bump and BillGuard
- The launch of usability, localization and security testing services in August 2011, which created the first end-to-end testing suite that spans the entire software development lifecycle.

"The market's adoption of uTest's services has been amazing -- particularly among retailers, media companies, gaming firms and agencies," said uTest CEO, Doron Reuveni. "Given the ever-increasing demands by users that a company's apps work flawlessly under real-world conditions, the opportunity before uTest is massive. This latest round sets us up to help even more companies, developers and testers launch apps that their users love."

While its steep top-line growth has put uTest in a strong financial position, the company elected to raise additional capital to enable it to scale faster and expand its offering. uTest will use the funds to:

- Open new offices in app creation hot spots, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago
- Develop tools that enable companies to launch better apps
- Explore M&A opportunities in the app-enablement space
- Recruit additional specialized experts -- including security testers, linguists and performance engineers
- Expand its testing platform and APIs for third-party developers

"Social, local and mobile have created phenomenal growth opportunities in our economy. And today, every company is an app creator -- whether in retail, social, education or healthcare," said QuestMark Partner, Tim Krongard. "uTest is perfectly positioned to help developers launch applications that will work as well in the wild as they do in the lab. Through our research, we repeatedly heard customers tell us that uTest helps them bring better products to market." Additionally, Krongard will be joining uTest's Board of Directors.

About QuestMark Partners
QuestMark Partners is an expansion-stage venture firm providing growth capital to exceptional management teams across the U.S. With over $750 million under management, QuestMark targets highly-differentiated, often category-creating companies with the commercial traction and strategic position to support long-term standalone success. Since its founding in 1998, QuestMark's collaborative, insightful, and patient approach to company building has helped many entrepreneurial teams grow and succeed as market leaders across a range of industries.

About uTest, Inc.
uTest provides in-the-wild testing services that span the entire software development lifecycle -- including functional, security, load, localization and usability testing. The company's community of more than 45,000 professional testers from 180 countries put web, mobile and desktop applications through their paces by testing on real devices under real-world conditions. Thousands of companies -- from startups to global brands -- rely on uTest as a critical component of their QA processes for fast, reliable, and cost-effective testing results.