Tiger Pistol raises $1 million in funding for expansion and promotion

Australian start-up Tiger Pistol, a social media marketing platform for small and medium businesses, has raised $1 million from Australian venture capital fund Rampersand and existing shareholders to establish an office in Silicon Valley and promote its services.

Co-founder and chief executive Steve Hibberd told StartupSmart the business tapped a desire by small and medium businesses to market themselves online through social media channels such as Facebook.

“There are about 75 million small businesses in available markets globally for what we’re doing,” he says.

Hibberd says attracting investment comes down to the quality of the business’s vision and the quality of its plan and people.

Founders should “be very honest with themselves” and ask whether they’ve done enough work to validate their idea, whether their plan stacks up and do they have the right people around them, Hibberd says.

“All of these things come out in the fundraising process,” he says.

Tiger Pistol provides a pre-scheduled social marketing plan for individual businesses using big data to achieve the best outcomes.

The company is currently focused on marketing plans using social network giant Facebook but aims to add other channels, such as Google AdWords, in the future.

“We remove a headache and provide confidence to small business operators, helping them to be successful in just a few minutes a day,” Hibberd says in a statement.

“Most small businesses know they need to be on social, but have neither the time nor the head space to take advantage of it.”

Tiger Pistol’s first platform was launched in May last year, providing custom Facebook pages and promotions for several thousand small businesses in more than 100 countries. Revenue has doubled each quarter.

The company raised $1.15 million in funding last year.

Rampersand co-founder and managing partner Paul Naphtali says social media marketing has “come of age”.

“It’s time small businesses had a tool as powerful as those built for enterprises, but with clear simplicity,” he says in a statement.

“Tiger Pistol has not only built a great product, they have created a new category in marketing platforms and we look forward to supporting company through its rapid growth.”