Enterprise collaboration company Clarizen snares $35 million in funding

Clarizen, an ambitious enterprise software outfit based in San Mateo, Calif., raised $35 million in an F round of funding Wednesday.

Clarizen touts itself as a serious enterprise work and collaboration platform whose main competition is Microsoft-owned Yammer.

Clarizen has chalked up an impressive menu of success since it was launched six years ago, initially being incubated in chief executive Avinoam “Avi” Nowogrodski’s home country of Israel, where the company’s main research and development efforts are still based. The company has over 2,000 paying customers in 230 countries, including Electronic Arts, Sony, Mazda and a large international auditing firm.

Clarizen’s focus is on allowing small, medium, and large enterprises to communicate on projects across a multitude of channels, all in the cloud: documents, email, charts, and all issues relative to virtually driving a company. And making it work.

“We’re not replacing email. Email will never disappear,” the fast talking Nowogrodski told VentureBeat.

As Clarizen puts it:

“By bringing all of this stuff together into a fully integrated Work Funnel, we can change the future of work. By connecting social conversations with tasks and projects, work can flow up or down the funnel in a single tool, along with the documents and context required for success. Today, we offer an enterprise-class solution for work collaboration and project management that harnesses the power of the cloud and social engagement to get work done on time and on budget.”

At the heart of Clarizen is its enterprise platform dubbed Clarizen v6. Nowogrodski pointed out that harnessing the cloud with the firm’s software solutions means a single, all encompassing solution that firms need to get ahead.

He disagreed that Clarizen is in competition with Slack, which just raised $42 million and purports to do similar things, or even Box, which also touts similar capabilities.

Clarizen, which has 150 employees, will use this latest tranche to expand its global footprint, including building out its existing platforms and making them better.

To date, the company has raised a total of $90 million, according to Nowogrodski. Investment heavyweight Goldman Sachs led the latest infusion of cash.