Inflexion is pleased to announce it has agreed to sell its investment in The Goat Agency (“Goat”), a global market leader in social media marketing, to WPP, the world’s largest marketing and communications company. This marks the first exit for Inflexion’s Enterprise Fund V, its lower mid-market fund.

Goat specialises in data-led end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns grounded in performance and measurement and was founded by Arron Shepherd, Nick Cooke, and Harry Hugo in 2015. Goat drives authentic brand engagement while integrating targeted paid media to reach the right audience and achieve industry-leading results. The company's 150+ staff across three global offices have helped to grow some of the biggest brands in the world, including Dell, Beiersdorf, Meta, Tesco, Uber, EA, Natura and Augustinus Bader, delivering best-in-class social and influencer campaigns. Since its founding, Goat has tracked the performance of over 50,000 influencer channels and over 250,000 pieces of content. 

In recent years, Adweek recognised Goat as Europe's fastest-growing agency while The Drum awarded it Social Media Agency of the Year and LinkedIn named it one of its top companies. 

Inflexion backed Goat’s co-founders with a significant minority investment in 2021 and has since supported the business to expand globally, with a core focus on the North American market, as well as benefitting from secular market growth drivers. Inflexion’s Digital team worked closely with management throughout the two-year investment period, to embed the use of technology and data into Goat’s proposition. Headcount grew substantially during this time as Inflexion and management invested into Goat’s cost base to support rapid growth.  

The Goat team inspired us with their passion, energy and innovation from the first time we met with them, and throughout it has been a dynamic partnership that has ultimately achieved fantastic results. This first exit for Enterprise Fund V is a milestone for the team and we are delighted to have kicked off with such a successful exit.

Malcolm Coffin, Head of the Enterprise Fund, Inflexion

Inflexion has offered us tremendous support as we have scaled the business in the UK and internationally. In particular, their knowledge of the US market and strong digital capabilities have added significant value to the business. We have delivered rapid international growth, and we are delighted with what we have achieved together.

Arron Shepherd, Co-Founder, Goat