Lucidchart raises $52M Series D, passes $100M ARR

Continuing our coverage of Utah-based startups, this morning we have our second big round of the year from the state. Lucid Software, best known as the parent company of Lucidchart, announced today that it has raised a $52 million Series D.

All that’s interesting enough, but more fun is that the company’s new revenue milestone. Lucid told TechCrunch in an interview with its CEO Karl Sun that it has crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark. Slightly annoyingly, it declined to say when it did so. From prior reporting we know that the firm reached $50 million ARR at some point in 2018. Its growth rate then, if we squint and do half-baked math in our head, looks pretty good.

Recently, fellow Utah-based Podium also raised a new round and crossed the $100 million ARR threshold.

In the same vein of nearly telling us what we want to know, Lucid declined to share a new valuation but noted that the new round pushed its valuation up and that it’s now worth more than $1 billion. Was it worth more than $1 billion the last time it raised? We don’t know, and the company isn’t telling.

Sharing some information is better than none and Lucid is an interesting company, so let’s remind ourselves about what it does, and then talk about why it says it raised less in this Series D than its Series C.

Lucid is a software company with two main products, Lucidchart and Lucidpress. Lucidchart is a cloud software tool that lets users (and teams) build visual data representations like flow charts, org layouts and the like. (Incidentally, while prepping this piece, I found out my partner was a big Lucidchart user during her graduate education.) Lucidpress helps companies build branded materials and content. The two products have helped the company attract around $166 million in capital so far, per Crunchbase and our own calculations.

You’ll notice Lucid raised less ($52 million) in this round than it did in its preceding capital event, a $72 million investment. I asked Sun about it, noting that the two most obvious ways to read the smaller figure was that the company was either in trouble or that it did not need much more money. It’s option two, according to the CEO, who told TechCrunch that Lucid didn’t need to raise thanks to its history of being very capital efficient.

The company still has “a fair amount in the bank” from its preceding round, Sun added, but it’s taking a cautious stance in light of the new world it now finds itself in. Capital made sense, Sun said. And since investors “continued to knock on the door saying we want to invest more,” he added, when the company agreed to take on new funds in mid-March, it wasn’t a hard close. The CEO told TechCrunch that his firm could have raised more, but decided to “hold the line” at around $50 million.

Lucid has lots more capital and likely enough runway to get through the impending recession. In more normal times I’d stamp my foot here, asking when we get an S-1. But with the markets in turmoil and an election looming, we’ll ask again next year.

Today’s funding event was led by ICONIQ, which previously invested in the company’s late-2018 Series C worth $72 million. Prior investors Meritech and Spectrum were joined in the round by new investor Utah-based Cross Creek.

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