The last time we wrote about Attend.com was a little under two years ago. The startup had raised $1 million from .406 Ventures, working on something you might call a CRM for events. Marketing software firms like Marketo and HubSpot track every dollar invested in email marketing. Attend is trying to do the same in corporate hosted events.
As of January 2016, Attend has raised $7 million total, has 100 customers (including HubSpot). Today, it's announcing a new board member: HubSpot's ex-CMO and "third co-founder," Mike Volpe. (We told you about Volpe's involvement in the BostInno Beat newsletter, Monday.)
Volpe joins .406 managing partner Maria Cirino, .406 partner Graham Brooks and Lycos veteran Jeff Bennett on Attend's board. He's not investing money in the startup, but he is investing time, CEO Matt Engel told me. "We're treating him as an extension of the team," Engel said.
"I'm a fan of the company," Volpe told me. He's planning a blog post announcing the move and some of his thoughts about why Attend has potential to be a "pillar company" in Boston, later today. (Update: here it is.) Volpe has written about his interest in helping build pillar companies in Boston, since his ouster from HubSpot last year.
Engel cited a Forrester study tracking a shift in companies spending, away from booths at industry trade shows, toward hosting smaller road-show events of their own. Attend handles the registration side of events like this and also integrates with Salesforce on a mobile device, so you know who's at your event and what your relationship is with them. "You're not starting a conversation with, 'What do we do for you again?'" Engel said.
Afterward, contacts from the event are plugged into Salesforce CRM. Marketo and HubSpot integrations are coming this quarter, Engel said. "In-person interactions matter and it's about taking that one on one and capturing what happened so you can get it into the appropriate system." Attend is putting that on display next week in an event in Boston that includes panelists from Localytics, Rapid7, InsightSquared and HubSpot.
Engel joined Attend in August, 2014, part of a process founder Greg Skloot discussed with BostInno back in May of that year, to bring in more experienced leadership. Skloot was 23 at the time and a recent graduate of Northeastern University, where he co-founded Attend while running events in the university's Entrepreneurs Club.
Skloot couldn't be reached in time for this story. He's out on the West Coast as VP growth at Netpulse. Co-founder Drew D'Agostino is in Nashville, working on an email marketing startup of his own, called Crystal. They're both still on the cap table, Engel told me.
That cap table is about to change, again: Attend has 25 employees and is planning to go out for another round of startup funding, middle of this year.
Editor's note: I picked this photo of an event somewhat randomly and only later learned MassChallenge was an Attend customer.
