Submittable announces that it has raised $ 10 million in Series B funding.

When I first wrote about the company in 2012 my goal was to help literary magazines manage their submissions – useful, but maybe not the kind of thing venture capitalists write about. big checks.

Since then, Submittable has raised a $ 5 million Series A and has grown by helping businesses across multiple industries manage their submissions and applications. Co-founder and CEO Michael FitzGerald said the company has designed products for four main verticals (business, academia, philanthropy and publishing) and signed large clients like AT&T, HBO, Conde Nast, Harvard and MIT.

And while publishing is no longer the primary focus, FitzGerald – a published novelist himself – noted that “in the publishing world we’re pretty much like you are.” I’ve certainly seen more pages of submissions myself (although FitzGerald acknowledged that the service hasn’t quite taken root among sci-fi magazines).

He also said the product is getting more and more sophisticated, for example allowing an editor to review and rank submissions based on very specific qualities such as sentence structure and voice.

Besides expanding into other verticals and launching on mobile, one of FitzGerald’s main goals is to create what he called “ZipRecruiter for Opportunities,” a marketplace that uses data that can be submitted. to connect individuals and organizations that seem suitable, whether they are writers. and magazines, scholarships and students or any other match for “any opportunity that is not a job”.

Submittable is based in Missoula, MT, and the cycle was led by Next Coast Ventures, a company that invests in startups outside of major coastal tech hubs. (Previous investors True Ventures, Next Frontier, and Flywheel Ventures also attended.) Next Coast co-founder and CEO Michael Smerklo joins the startup’s board of directors.

“Submittable is a perfect example of what’s possible outside of Silicon Valley,” Smerklo said in a statement. “The platform modernizes the often painful business of managing the submission process and leveraging that data for true opportunity creation.”

FitzGerald (who has spoken elsewhere about his experience as the CEO of a startup while facing a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer) said the plan was to expand the team to submit from 88 to 240 people d ‘by the end of 2020. He acknowledged that the location created some challenges in hiring, especially when it comes to experienced executives, but said he was helped by the fact that ClassPass and OnxMaps have also opened offices in Missoula.

Additionally, he said one of the most effective tactics is to search LinkedIn for executives who attended high school in Missoula between 1985 and 2000: “Everyone’s looking for a way to get home. “