Social commerce will be #1

InsideView, a company that bills itself as a "social sales and sales intelligence leader," on Thursday announced the close of a $12 million Series C round led by Foundation Capital, which has also invested in such noteworthy companies as Chegg, Netflix, SimplyHired, and more. Existing investors Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners, and Greenhouse Capital Partners also chipped in, bringing the company's total raised to $25.4 million.

Created in 2005 by founder and CEO Umberto Milletti, InsideView combines traditional editorial sources with social media to aggregate information about companies, including people, events, SEC filings, blogs, and more from sources like Reuters, Capital IQ, Cortera, SimplyHired, LinkedIn, and--of course--Facebook. The net result is a rich tapestry of social connections and curated information for B2B sales professionals to establish connections and more effectively drive sales. InsideView currently serves more than 75,000 sales professionals across 1,000 companies, representing a user base growth of more than 3x from the company's previous 20,000 users.

Additionally, in the past year, the company saw record-breaking revenue growth of 135% and won numerous awards, including four Sales & Marketing 2.0 2011 Awards, one of which was Best Use of Social Media for Sales.