New York-based Vendelux, a maker of specialized marketing software to leverage industry events, has closed a $14 million Series A led by FirstMark Capital, whose hits include Airbnb and Pinterest.
Other participants included Palo Alto, Calif.-based Cervin Ventures, and founders of leading industry showpieces, such as Jonathan Weiner of HLTH, ShopTalk and Money20/20; jay Weintraub of Manifest and Blueprint; and Alex Theuma of SaaStock. So far, Vendelux has raised $17.1 million.
‘Events Are Everything’
“It’s been a wild ride! When my co-founder Stefan [Deeran] and I left our executive roles at a public company to build an in-person event marketing company in the middle of a once-in-a-generation pandemic, people called us crazy,” said CEO Alex Reynolds. “Now, in-person events are back and bigger than ever.”
Reynolds and Deeran worked together at Shutterstock photo service. Reynolds, a graduate of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, previously worked at YP, Peek, and Bain & Company. Deeran, who was head of New Business at Shutterstock, previously worked at Parse.ly, which was acquired by WordPress parent Automattic.
Two years ago, the duo bootstrapped Vendelux. Today, the startup claims to have a built an “incredible team of world-class builders, [and] created a community of over 5,000 active event marketers.”
Top-tier Clients
Vendelux’s platform leverages artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms to offer millions of data points on over 160,000 global events, helping marketers make decisions, such as which event to attend or sponsor. Its customers include PayPal, MongoDB, Okta and T-Mobile, TechCrunch said.
Reynolds calls event marketers the “unsung heroes” of organizations, and event marketing to be the “most impactful” revenue-generating channel. “My personal goal is that event marketing leads to the best path to becoming a chief marketing officer,” said Reynolds.
“Our Series A enables us to provide an even better experience for event marketers, from discovering the most relevant events to measuring ROI down to the dollar by event, by sales rep, by year,” he added. “It’s the fuel for us to build better product features across the event marketing lifecycle, and help us expand internationally to meet growing demand in EMEA and APAC. “
Storied Picks
Co-founded by Rick Heitzmann and Amish Jani, New York-based FirstMark has raised $3.2 billion investors since 2008.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Advertising / Media / Communications / Public Relations
Nevins & Associates
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Heitzmann, who received an MBA from Harvard Business School, was previously an entrepreneur and founding member of the senior management team at First Advantage, a background-checks firm that was acquired by First American. He has been named to the Forbes’ Midas List for the past three years.
Jani, a venture capital veteran with an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, has been named among the world’s top venture capitalists by CB Insights and The New York Times. Prior to founding FirstMark, he was a partner with Pequot Ventures.
FirstMark’s biggest successes include Airbnb, Pinterest, Shopify, DraftKings, Stubhub, Upwork, and Ro. Its recent portfolio investments include Kasa Living, Pickle, Sparta and Metaloop.
