Salesforce buys Contentful for $1.25B
Contentful makes software that companies use to manage the text and images on their websites and apps. It was valued at $3B in 2021, so $1.25B is a large reset. Who did well out of it depends almost entirely on when each investor came in.
Who owned Contentful at the $1.25B exit
Dealroom’s estimate of ownership at the sale, grouped by the round each investor came in on.
Source: Dealroom funding rounds and valuation data; Dealroom analysis. Illustrative primary-issuance model, excludes options, secondaries and round-by-round investor allocations.
The founders’ slice belongs to two people: Sascha Konietzke and Paolo Negri, who started the company in Berlin.
Who founded Contentful
The two founders and what they did previously. Photos and career records from Dealroom people profiles.
PreviouslyFounded Thriventures, whose StorageRoom product — a content store for mobile apps — became Contentful. Before that, co-founded the location platform Tagcrumbs; started at Hewlett-Packard.
PreviouslyBackend engineer at Berlin games company Wooga as its traffic grew tenfold. Before that, led a development team at Forward in London and worked on AutoScout24.
Source: Dealroom people profiles; founder bios and press.
Owning a share of the company is not the same as making money on it. That depends on the price each round paid.
Money in and estimated money out, by investor
Each bubble is an investor’s estimated ticket, placed at its round; the green bubble is the platform’s shareholder-structure estimate × the $1.25B sale. Founders and team take about $500M; Point Nine’s early money returns about 18 times; the 2021 growth money lands underwater inside Other shareholders.
Dealroom estimates.
Those entry prices ran from a $3.2M valuation in 2013 to $3B in 2021.
Contentful’s valuation at each funding round and at the sale
Post-money valuation at each round, then the sale. Contentful was founded in 2013; the line climbs thirteen years to a $3B peak, then resets to the $1.25B exit. Hover a point for the round details.
Source: Dealroom.co
$1.25B is well below the 2021 mark. Measured against what other software companies sell for, it is not a low price.
How Contentful’s price compares with software exits since 2015
Price divided by revenue at exit for venture-backed companies, 2015 to 2026. Contentful’s reported 5.7 times lands above the median in 11 of the past 12 years.
Source: Dealroom Multiples & Valuations — VC-backed exits (IPO, M&A and buyout), EV/Revenue at exit, nearest-rank quartiles across 1,476 deals, 2015–2026 (dealroom.co/multiples). Contentful's 5.7x is the reported $1.25B midpoint over estimated revenue.
Salesforce itself has paid anything from 5 to 27 times revenue for software.
Revenue multiples Salesforce has paid on its software acquisitions
Price divided by revenue across Salesforce’s notable software acquisitions. Contentful’s 5.7 times sits with Informatica and ExactTarget, well below the 12 to 27 times Salesforce paid in 2018 and 2019.
Source: Dealroom.co for Contentful valuation; Salesforce announcements and public company filings / reported ARR where available. Contentful price is reported, not disclosed by Salesforce.
What this means
Contentful did not sell for anything like its 2021 valuation. But 5.7 times revenue is above the median software exit, and Salesforce has paid less for larger companies. The price is normal. What changed is that the 2021 round bought in at $3B. When an investor came in mattered more than what the company finally sold for.