A Scottsdale-based startup recently landed a seed round of funding that it will use to expand its software platform for marketing firms to build, engage and monetize audiences.
AudiencePlus earlier this month closed a $5.4 million seed round led by San Francisco-based Emergence Capital with participation by Forum Ventures, Worklife Ventures, GTMfund and other investors.
The fresh infusion of capital will go toward scaling the company's software platform to meet user demand and hiring more employees, said Anthony Kennada, co-founder and CEO of AudiencePlus.
“It was basically to help us go from zero to one,” Kennada said. "We have a few dozen customers and a handful of paid customers, which is exciting at our stage."
AudiencePlus unveiled the beta version of its product on May 11 in a LinkedIn takeover event with a keynote speech hosted by "Boy Meets World" actress Danielle Fishel.
AudiencePlus' software is designed to provide users with capabilities of larger media companies. It replaces corporate blogs and resource centers with a standalone media platform that hosts videos, podcasts, blogs and live events without the need for marketing teams to write code to create it, Kennada said.
“You can host your video content, articles, live streams, webinars and virtual events all on a beautiful, branded media property that lives on your domain without hiring an engineer,” he said. “The second piece is you can build subscribers for your content and as they subscribe, you can start understanding engagement data about your audience.”
While YouTube and other platforms provide a number of views for content, AudiencePlus’ platform leverages machine learning to reveal topics that resonate with specific subsets of viewers, allowing marketers to gain insight on how audience engagement translates to revenue attainment, Kennada said.
“We’re actually building a machine learning model about your audience that’s helpful,” he said.
Growing an audience
Kennada has led software-as-a-service marketing teams for more than a decade, serving as chief marketing officer for Phoenix-based companies Gainsight, Front and Hopin prior to launching AudiencePlus.
“What I’ve done at each company is try to build a hub for podcasts, videos and livestreams on our websites comparable to Netflix,” he said.
He found that content management tools — such as Wordpress and Webflow — were geared toward long-form written content rather than podcasts, webinars or virtual programs. That prompted him to develop custom software for marketers that combines a Netflix-like experience with video content and engagement data.
“That was sort of the foray for me to jump out of the CMO seat and try and solve this problem,” he said.
Since launching its platform, AudiencePlus has already gained several clients, including Crossbeam, Five9, Gainsight, Lavender, Nextiva and Zuora.
“We’ve been in the market for six days and we’ve got a ton of leads from business-to-business companies and agencies,” Kennada told the Business Journal earlier this month.
AudiencePlus, which has 10 employees, occupies an office near 44th Street and Camelback Road with plans to relocate to a new space in the fall, Kennada said.
The company's target customers are primarily business-to-business SaaS companies, but its platform can be used by any marketing department looking to grow engagement, he said.
"We want to make sure we can innovate on behalf of our customers and execute some of our new ideas that we are really excited about,” Kennada said.
