Viralheat

Viralheat, founded in 2009 by Raj Kadam and Vishal Sankhla, established itself as a social media management and enterprise content marketing platform. The company operated on a SaaS model, providing digital marketers with an integrated suite for social media monitoring, publishing, analytics, and content intelligence from its headquarters in San Mateo, California.

The platform's core offering centered on delivering actionable intelligence from the social web. It provided tools for analyzing social media trends, gauging public sentiment, and identifying key influencers. One of its key differentiators was a feature dubbed "Human Intent," which aimed to move beyond historical analytics to predict customer needs and generate sales leads from social media conversations. This functionality allowed clients to integrate social media data directly into their sales, marketing, and customer support workflows.

Viralheat's journey included securing $4.41 million in funding over two rounds. This began with a $75,000 seed round in December 2009, followed by a substantial $4.25 million Series A round in June 2011, which was led by the Mayfield Fund. This capital infusion was earmarked for expanding its engineering team and accelerating customer acquisition. The company's growth trajectory culminated in its acquisition by Cision, a global media intelligence company, in March 2015 for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, the Viralheat platform and its team, including founders Raj Kadam and Vishal Sankhla, were integrated into Cision's operations to power and expand its social media service offerings. Keywords: Viralheat, social media management, content marketing platform, social media monitoring, predictive social analytics, Raj Kadam, Vishal Sankhla, Cision acquisition, Mayfield Fund, social media intelligence, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, lead generation, SaaS, marketing analytics, enterprise software, social publishing, social reporting