Contentstack just acquired Lytics, a real-time customer data platform. Here’s why it matters

When I spoke to Neha Sampat last week, I was Zooming in from my bedroom. It was the day after New Year’s, and with family still lingering, I was looking for a spot to hide out.

I told her that on an earlier call, someone mentioned that my room “looked like a hotel.” To be fair, my wife and I are minimalists, and we run a tight ship. For someone who travels frequently, the comment wasn’t completely off base. 

It made for a good laugh, but I kept asking myself: Did they mean Ritz-Carlton or Holiday Inn Express? I’ll happily take for former, but I’ve had some decent stays at the latter. 

Perception is a funny thing, especially when translating and categorizing our world. That’s long been the case in tech, where software tools evolve, and lines begin to blur. Establishing differentiated value is key, but helping buyers understand where you fit is also a critical facet of the category paradigm.   

With Contentstack, the company Neha founded way back in 2018, the “headless CMS” moniker it pioneered never encompassed the whole mission. A few years back, when I reviewed their new Launch product for front-end hosting, they were already positioning themselves as a “composable DXP” to reflect an expanding ecosystem of services.

Said another way: it’s a whole lot more than the average hotel room.

While some analysts might have guffawed at the notion of a headless CMS attaining DXP status – presenting a sort of antithetical composition of a composable solution – Contentstack has continued to build on its aspirations and redefine itself at the intersection of CMS and DXP.

The Launch offering (among other products) telegraphed this shift. But things really solidified today with its acquisition of Lytics, a real-time customer data platform.

Delivering “personalization for the masses,” Lytics has forged a stellar reputation with its xCDP platform – which offers real-time capabilities and seamless integration with almost any tech stack using hundreds of pre-built integrations, from Salesforce to social. You can even tap AI to generate customizable and reusable templates to hook up any tool in minutes.

The purchase – made for an undisclosed amount – promises to energize Contentstack with a host of features, including real-time engagement data and audience insights for both known and unknown visitors (a big one in this new world of data privacy). Contentstack’s users will also be able to create audience profiles and segments out of the box and leverage a data activation layer that energizes omnichannel. Together, these capabilities will help unlock real-time personalization at scale for marketers and brands.

Bringing a CDP into the room certainly changes the feng shui. It effectively puts Contentstack’s ecosystem in parity with other legacy DXPs, for which a native data layer has long been a non-negotiable requirement for AI-powered hyper-personalization. 

At the same time, it expands flexibility and choice, allowing customers to build solutions with any of Contentstack’s technology or harness purpose-built solutions that are integrated and ready to roll. Both companies share a composable approach that makes this possible.

“We’ve been on a decade-plus long journey to build the world’s best composable DXP for brands – and data was the missing link,” Neha said. “Truly personalized digital experiences require a marriage of scalable content management and actionable first-party data, wherever it lives, operating in real time.”

Neha Sampat, CEO of Contentstack. Source: LinkedIn

In her mind, this is why the combination of Contentstack and Lytics makes so much sense – particularly for brands that are building dynamic experiences and require real-time data to make personalization work at scale. 

Many questions remain about the go-to-market strategy, but Neha indicated that all will be revealed in the coming months, culminating at ContentCon 2025 (the company’s annual users conference) in Chicago this June. We can expect a fully integrated solution by then, and perhaps some expanded offerings in the way of technical solutions.

As far as rooms go, this could be a Ritz-level upgrade for Contentstack as it looks to evolve the DXP landscape, capture more of the enterprise market share, and do it all while remaining true to its composable roots.  

A first-ever acquisition for Contentstack – and a pivotal one

Well… sort of. Yes, it’s being billed as the first significant technology acquisition for the company. But Neha reminded me that this isn’t exactly her first rodeo.

“We had a small acquisition in October of 2021 when we acquired the team that used to implement Contentstack at the professional services org we spun out of,” she said. “It was kind of internal as we knew that group, and it was a company that I founded. So we brought them on to become our technical solutions org and help us with enablement.”

Obviously, this is a much bigger deal considering Lytics’ market resonance. Founded in 2012 by James McDermott and Aaron Raddon, the company is widely regarded as an early pioneer of the CDP category. In 2019, it was named the #1 CDP in AdWeek’s “Reader’s Choice Awards” and one of the top 10 fastest-growing data and AI products by Databricks. 

Lytics provides real-time customer data with its xCDP platform. Source: Lytics website

McDermott, who has been CEO at Lytics, will join Contentstack as its new Global Head of Data Products. Additionally, the company’s 26 full-time employees have signed on with the composable DXP, bringing the combined headcount to 500.

Along with the cache of IP and talent, Contentstack will also inherit a slew of notable brands from the Lytics portfolio. This includes globally recognized players like Mondelez, Universal Music Group, LiveNation, Clorox, and Ancestry. A solid pickup roster by any measure. 

Contentstack isn’t revealing how much they paid for this acquisition, but you can extrapolate some ranges. I wouldn’t put 100% stock in the public revenue assumptions, but up until today, Lytics had successfully raised a total of $58.3 million in funding over seven rounds. According to PrivCo, this puts its valuation in the range of $100 million to $500 million. 

On the other side, Contentstack has been chasing growth and shaking the investment trees with solid results. To date, the company has raised a total of $169 million under Neha’s leadership. Along with continued year-over-year gains – codified by its listing on 2024’s Inc. 5000 – this investment might have given the company a substantial cushion for making a bold move. 

While it's likely not the biggest M&A move in the CMS space, an acquisition of this magnitude is a milestone for Contentstack. Not only does it represent a smart investment strategy and real buying power, but it also evokes a market maturity that will certainly propel the perception surrounding its completeness of vision and how serious the company is about its future. 

Build or buy? That is the question…

Two years ago, after raising its impressive $80 million Series C, Contentstack set up a Corporate Strategy Office under its CTO, Nishant Patel. The group’s mission was simple: be disruptive and look for new ways to help customers stay in parity – or even ahead – of the market’s evolution. 

According to Neha, this was a critical juncture in the company’s BIY (Build-It-Yourself) journey, and resulted in a decision to stay that course for their most recent offerings in both visual building and personalization.

“There were five key themes,” Neha recalled. “One was AI, which was already upon us. What do we do about it? Do we build versus buy versus integrate with? There was also visual building, which we ended up doing ourselves, but we did look at several front-end companies [as possible acquisitions]. And then there was personalization, which posed the same question. We ended up choosing to build our own because we believed that personalization was so integral to the content platform that it couldn't really live on top of it with the same level of success.”

The last two were data and analytics. I asked her what motivated the decision to buy now with a proven track record of bootstrapping the build.

“The light bulb moment was when we made personalization generally available in September of last year,” she relayed. “That's when we were starting to see our deeper customers, the ones we've been working with for years, coming to us and asking for customer data and looking for advice on the right ecosystem to help make it happen. They were going to our SIs and asking the same questions, and in turn, they were coming back to us. So we went on this journey with all the partners we were working with to find the best fit for us.”

"We were excited about the prospect of what one plus one could equal, and we believed it was a lot greater than two, right? So that turned into an acquisition conversation.”

For many reasons, Lytics was at the top of the list. As she explained, it was more than their reputation – it was the size of the company, their AI readiness, and the proven success of their product-led growth motions. All of this made for an ideal target, one that would accelerate Contentstack’s ability to fulfill the strategic need for customer data. 

“We also had similar cultural implications in terms of the companies and the teams,” Neha said. “We got to know them as a partner first, and we really enjoyed working together. We were excited about the prospect of what one plus one could equal, and we believed it was a lot greater than two, right? So that turned into an acquisition conversation.”

Build or buy? At the end of the day, a leader must weigh this decision based on a number of variables. Do you invest the energy in building – which requires an investment in strategy, talent, and resources? Or do you fast-track by finding a technology that already exists and is proven in the marketplace? And of course, do you have the capital to go in either direction?

Not an easy decision. But given Neha’s track record, the “buy” strategy with Lytics seems to be on solid ground.

Reinforcing composability with choice

One of Lytics' most appealing attributes is its innate CMS readiness. As a platform, it has endeavored to put customer profiles and insights in the hands of content creators and channel managers. To that end, it has intentionally focused on the CMS layer, even providing free, off-the-shelf plugins for WordPress and Drupal on its website homepage.

This raises the question: how do you play with other personalization tools or CMSes in the ecosystem? This is often a challenge when a DXP absorbs another relied-upon technology within the broader marketplace (think Acquia buying Monsido). 

The answer rests with the composable mindset that has guided Contentstack from day one, giving customers the control they need to build on their own terms.

“Fundamentally, that's how we operate,” Neha proclaimed. “And that's how we’ll continue to operate. As founders of the MACH Alliance, it's a principle that we'll stick to, that the customer should have choice, flexibility, and the ability to use what they choose based on their needs, and we'll continue to support all of the top players in the market.”

As Neha explained, there are also competitors to Lytics in Contentstack’s own marketplace, which reinforces that commitment to choice. 

“Lytics also works with a lot of other CMSes, and that won't stop. We'll continue to spark both sides of customers the way we have. We're just going to build a much better integration and better solution together.”

Is this a new breed of DXP?

Hard to say. What’s a DXP again? As Forrester’s Joe Cicman famously said, we keep using that term – but it doesn’t always mean what we think it means.

Here’s what we do know: the acquisition of Lytics certainly creates more distinction between Contentstack and its pure-play headless brethren. Customer data has become a compelling need for powering personalization, and other headless CMS vendors simply don’t offer those onboard capabilities.

At the same time, bringing customer data into its platform is changing the competitive calculus upstream. In a dense field of legacy DXPs, Contentstack is reinforcing the value of its “composable DXP” with a clear focus on choice and agility. They’re now able to offer a more complete solution that meets the expectations of a modern DXP while ensuring that users have more control. 

For both Contentstack and Lytics, marketers are at the heart of the mission. Both companies have been laser-focused on the “Holy Grail” of personalization, which is powering the future of content and digital experiences. But without actionable first-party data, it’s a room without a view. As Neha explained, getting that data closer to the content management layer will provide some significant advantages.

“What we found is that by having data and analytics integrated into your content management play, you're essentially unlocking all of this personalization that creates dynamic experiences,” she said. “It gives marketers the power to say, ‘Now I know who my audiences are, and I understand the segments, and I can create these experiences that really matter on a real-time basis.’ That just doesn’t exist in any other platform today.”

While legacy DXPs will continue to espouse the advantages of their own built-in data layers, Neha sees the legacy posture as an inhibitor. Contentstack recently ran a campaign to “shed the old CMS tech,” focusing on the efficiencies and potential cost savings associated with moving to their modern platform. 

To be fair, legacy DXPs have made significant gains in modularizing their own ecosystems and becoming more composable. There’s also been a palpable “MACH-lash” due to failed composable projects, which has contributed to more trepidation around the investment in a composable strategy. Neha senses that fear – but is challenging it head-on.

“I think partners are going to play such a critical role in relieving some of the fear [of composable], but it has to be more than a technology decision. It has to be a decision about transformation. It's deciding to let the legacy go.”

“Going into 2025, there's a little bit of fear of ‘if I stay the same, I'm not going to be able to make progress.’ But if I go composable, or if I change my architecture, if I bring people along this new path, we don't know what we're getting into and it feels daunting. I think partners are going to play such a critical role in relieving some of that fear, but it has to be more than a technology decision. It has to be a decision about transformation. It's deciding to let the legacy go. I'm going to take this 30-year-old technology that I've been trying to build with, add Band-Aids to, and build something modern and new that is set for the next stage of growth.”

That next stage includes not only cloud-first capabilities but technology ready for the new frontier of experiences like augmented reality. To that end, making the shift requires an organizational transformation, one that broadly incorporates technologists and executives across the entire marketplace – from vendors to partners to customers.

“We have to make it something fun, exciting, and forward-looking. Partners can play a big role in that. Vendors can, too, and we should take some of that responsibility. But we also need to enable partners to help customers on that journey. To me, the evolution of our partner ecosystem is how do we make it easier for them to enable our customers to be successful.”

Technology is a key part of what makes a DXP what it is. But it’s also the leadership that defines and delivers it. To that end, Contentstack’s vision of a composable DXP might just be what’s next.

Building a culture of diversity

Neha Sampat is more than a successful CEO at a burgeoning technology company. She’s a bonified Renaissance woman, tapping her entrepreneurial instincts to create change and opportunity. With grit and determination, she’s built Contentstack into a game-changing force in the content management field and leveraged innovation in her quest to build – and now buy – the next steps of her company’s evolution. 

Culture is always a concern when “stitching” two entities together. But Neha has long been an outspoken advocate for people and diversity, something evident not only at Contentstack but also at Surfboard Ventures, where she manages a portfolio of unique technology companies and champions humanity. 

I asked her how important this moment was for her, not just in light of Contentstack’s first acquisition but also as a female CEO who's advancing opportunities for women and people with diverse backgrounds.

“It's something I'm super passionate about,” she said glowingly. “I look at it as three buckets: exposure, relatability, and access. Exposure is getting the word out, and along those lines, I think we're making content management cool again – and with AI, attracting talent is starting to happen. Relatability is about people like me and other women inside our organization from diverse backgrounds bringing people in.”

Contentstack is embracing that relatability on a “global citizen” level by traveling to universities in India, recruiting at women's colleges, and striving to position Contentstack as a career destination. Access, she explained, is providing the pathway to jobs by looking outside of normal channels and investing time in things like MACH mentoring, Girls Who Code, internships, and more.

“We bring in female high school students to intern every year, and they're working alongside our engineering and product teams to get really excited about their careers. And then they get jobs here or go to a university or work at different companies that do cool things. So it's just constantly being out there and getting that exposure, relatability, and access as sort of a core foundation for how we continue to attract talent – not just for ourselves, but spreading that word across the whole tech industry.”

As the ink dries on the Lytics acquisition, Neha is beaming with excitement about what’s next. And while there are clear challenges on multiple fronts, her curiosity about the possibilities is nothing short of inspiring.

“Now, we’re thinking about how we can disrupt content management in general, and what digital experiences will look like in the future,” she mused. “And if we think about having real-time analytics and data with Lytics, we start asking, what does autonomous experience creation look like? What can AI really do in this space? And that gives us the opportunity to think beyond where we were.”

Based on that enthusiasm alone, it’s one hotel room upgrade you won’t be disappointed with.

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