• May 19, 2008

Web marketing firm HubSpot has raised $12 million in second-round venture financing from investors led by Matrix Partners and in including General Catalyst Partners. The latest round brings its total funding to $17 million.

HubSpot plans to use the new capital to aggressively expand its sales and product staff to support a customer base that has grown to nearly 400 small and medium-sized companies. HubSpot runs an online marketing system including search engine optimization, blogs and social media, aimed at helping businesses generate and close more sales leads.

The company is probably best known for its WebSiteGrader tool, a free service that analyzes sites according to various "vital signs" such as traffic, inbound link data, and GooglePage Rank, and rates them on a scale of 1 to 100.

--Mark Walsh