The founders of Rock Paper Coin raised a $2.3 million seed round they will use for hiring and adding features to their business software for the wedding industry.
The round was led by Portland-based Elevate Capital and includes HeartsLab. Both are new investors in the company. Existing backer Stormlight Holdings also participated.
Rock Paper Coin built software to digitize payments and contract management for weddings. The platform can bring together three parties — the wedding planning, the couple and a vendor — into one system to manage the contracts and invoices.
The company’s revenue has more than tripled since last year. Following industrywide disruptions in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the wedding industry has massively rebounded. RPC used the down time to get valuable user feedback as well as onboard customers. Now they are ready to grow even more.
“We’re seeing significant demand from wedding planners, vendors, and couples who have all recognized the benefits of using RPC’s software to help streamline the behind-the-scenes business workflows for the wedding industry by digitizing and automating contracts, invoices, and payments,” said co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Sheils.
The majority of its customers are wedding planners, but increasingly it is seeing other vendors — such as florists and photographers — adopting the platform for weddings as well as other needs. More than 1,900 businesses have registered with RPC. The company is a subscription and takes a cut of payments processed through the system.
The company has a team of 15 and is hiring for sales, marketing and engineering roles.
The weddings are here, are the VCs?
RPC was founded in 2018 by sisters-in-law Nora Sheils and Elizabeth Sheils. Both have deep wedding industry backgrounds. Nora founded Bridal Bliss, one of the region’s largest wedding planning companies, and Elizabeth spent 14 years working at Bridal Bliss.
The duo started fundraising in March but had to pause in the spring and regroup as investors started to balk at new deals as macroeconomic and recession fears took hold. This was surprising to Nora and Elizabeth since the wedding industry is largely recession-proof. However, they found themselves and the business under a bigger microscope.
"We have always found the inequity of being female-founded at every stage (of fundraising). We felt it at this stage more," said Elizabeth, largely because it is now a time of more uncertainty. "People wanted bigger numbers and bigger proof."
Weddings are an event people save for, so there will be budgets even as other areas get cut, Elizabeth said. People are hungry to celebrate after years of being apart.
“This has been the busiest wedding season the industry has seen in years. It doesn’t look to slow in 2023, which is exciting,” said Nora. “Budgets (for weddings) are bigger than we have ever seen.”
It was one of several challenges they encountered on the way to closing this round. Other elements working against them:
- It’s a fully women-founded company, and despite a lot of industry talk women founders still only receive a tiny slice of venture investment.
- Its founders are nontechnical.
- It’s a company in the wedding space, which is seen as geared toward women and a less serious industry.
“The wedding industry doesn’t get a lot of respect or attention,” said Nora, even though it's expected to be a $414 billion industry by 2030.
In the case of the new investors in this round, its groups who have been following the company over the years. Both Elevate and HearstLab focus on investing in women.
“We were greatly impressed with their backgrounds as seasoned wedding planners who built one of the largest wedding planning companies in the Pacific Northwest,” said Nitin Rai, Elevate Capital Founder and Managing Partner, in a written statement. “Elizabeth and Nora understand the industry from the inside, are intimately familiar with the challenges of planning weddings, and know how to connect with their customers.”
