Company Press Release

DealerRater Receives Major Growth Equity Investment from Great Hill Partners

DealerRater receives an equity investment from Great Hill Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm focused on growth companies.

Waltham, Mass. - December 3, 2013 - DealerRater, the world’s premier car dealer review website, announced today that it has received an equity investment from Great Hill Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm focused on growth companies. Great Hill Partners invested out of its $1.1 billion fourth fund. DealerRater will use the financing to continue its global expansion, accelerate product innovation and invest in additional sales and marketing resources. The company will continue to evaluate strategic acquisition opportunities, with additional equity capital available from Great Hill Partners.

“DealerRater is committed to providing an invaluable and critical point of connection between consumers and automotive dealerships,” said Chip Grueter, Founder and Chief Technology Architect of DealerRater. “The experience and resources of the team at Great Hill Partners will perfectly complement our focus on continued product innovation, category-defining leadership and an engaging consumer experience.”

DealerRater pioneered the category of auto dealer review and online reputation management. To date, the company has collected 1.2 million consumer reviews, representing more reviews than the next five largest competitors combined, making it the de facto industry standard for reputation management within the automotive dealer sector. The company’s website attracts 15 million visitors each year and web pages with the DealerRater brand drive over 48 million unique visits annually.

“DealerRater offers consumers a powerful platform to evaluate the quality and service of auto dealers across North America,” added Mark Taber, a Managing Partner at Great Hill Partners. “We are excited to partner with Chip and his team to continue to build DealerRater into the leading source of reputation management and content marketing in the auto segment.”

With industry-leading consumer review verification processes and unique dealer employee review pages, DealerRater is the leading site for consumers seeking rich content on automobile purchases and servicing. For auto dealers, DealerRater's platform provides a comprehensive suite of reputation management and content marketing solutions including certification, online dashboard and reporting tools and social media / search engine monitoring. All of these tools enable dealerships to maintain a positive presence on the Web, increase traffic to their showroom and websites, reach in-market customers and increase SEO value.

Rafael Cofiño, a Principal at Great Hill, added, “We believe DealerRater has exceptional growth ahead as the company continues to capitalize on the secular offline to online migration of auto advertising. Peer reviews are increasingly important to consumers in their auto buying process and DealerRater’s breadth and depth of review content and trusted brand have made it the leading destination for both consumers and auto dealers.”

With this investment, Mark Taber and Rafael Cofiño have joined DealerRater’s Board of Directors. Further financial terms of this deal were not disclosed.

Portico Capital Securities LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to DealerRater with respect to this transaction.

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Tags: dealerrater, reputation management, great hill partners