Portland’s Brandlive has acquired the virtual events and webinar business of New York-based Notified.
The deal will quadruple the size of Brandlive’s business, said CEO Sam Kolbert-Hyle. It adds about 100 employees to the company, bringing the workforce to roughly 160, and it adds a portfolio of high-end enterprise customers to the Brandlive platform, he said.
Notified is part of West Technology Group LLC and controlled by funds managed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO). In 2021, a company that Notified later acquired bought Vancouver events startup Hubb. Brandlive's deal includes the Hubb business.
Brandlive has built a software and services platform that provides TV-like video for enterprise customers to run webinars and internal meetings, such as global all-hands meetings. The company works with Fortune 500 companies.
“At Brandlive, our mission is to bring the magic of television to work — through software and teams that add visual creativity and production value,” said Kolbert-Hyle in a written statement. “We’re thrilled to welcome Notified’s virtual events and webinar customers and team to the Brandlive family.”
In a news release Notified President Nimesh Davé said the sale will enable that company to focus on its investor relations and public relations businesses.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In an interview, Kolbert-Hyle said Brandlive has raised capital since its last round in 2021. The company has raised more than $30 million since 2021 mostly from insiders, he said.
He also said this will not be the last deal for the company. His vision is for Brandlive to roll up the whole enterprise webinar space into its platform. He expects to raise more money in the next year.
Brandlive saw a huge spike in use for virtual events during the pandemic. However, in the last two years the company has seen the virtual event business decline as in-person gatherings returned. That has meant cutting back on virtual event staff from highs of 2021 and re-focusing on a pre-pandemic strategy around high-quality all-hands meetings and enterprise webinars for large enterprise clients.
Aside from the Notified deal, Wednesday also saw Brandlive landing a partnership with Google that makes its platform available to all Google Workspace customers. Google Workspace is the cloud-based suite of tools that compete with Microsoft Office 365.
Google customers can host webinars and meetings within Google Meet and an integration with Brandlive.
