Venista Ventures is a Cologne, Germany-based pre-seed investor backing tech-driven enterprise and consumer startups. As part of our investment strategy, we invest in outstanding teams based in Western Europe & the Nordics.

Venista Ventures

Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that powers a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel backs entrepreneurs who have what it takes to build a business.  Accel’s vision for entrepreneurship and business enables it to identify and invest in the companies that will be responsible for the growth of next-generation industries. Accel-backed companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, DJI, Dropbox, Dropcam, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Lookout Security, MoPub, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Vox Media, and others.

Accel

HV Capital is a Munich- and Berlin-based venture capital firm that supports founders in developing their internet companies. Since 2000 HV Capital, formerly HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, has invested in Internet and technology companies through various generations of funds and is one of the most successful and financially strongest early-stage and growth investors in Europe. HV Capital has already invested in around 200 companies, including Zalando, Delivery Hero, FlixMobility and SumUp. The total of all HV Funds amounts to €1.7 billion. The company supports startups with capital between €500,000 and €50 million. This makes HV Capital one of the few venture capitalists in Europe that can finance startups through all growth phases.

HV Capital

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. Since 2009, they’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world's tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, Monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. Salesforce Ventures leverages decades of expertise in the cloud and long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth.

Salesforce Ventures

charles

charles is a leading WhatsApp marketing platform made in Berlin. Its easy-to-use, interface enables brands to run a powerful, GDPR-compliant WhatsApp channel – with rich functionality to boost sales. Its key features are Campaigns and Journeys. With Campaigns, you can send outbound marketing messages to your consumers, and track responses. With Journeys, you create and send engaging automated conversational flows – like WhatsApp product finders and Black Friday competitions. Plus analytics and proactive support.

Charles is a Berlin-based software company that provides a conversational commerce (cCommerce) platform for businesses to enable marketing and sales through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp. Launched in 2020, Charles allows merchants to offer personalized shopping experiences by integrating their ecommerce operations with chat app APIs. The platform facilitates product sales, newsletter distribution, and customer support via chat, seamlessly connecting systems like Shopify and Salesforce with messaging apps. Charles' technology aims to bring the ecommerce process into conversation channels like WhatsApp, bridging the gap between consumers and brands.

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Harnessing the power of social influence to fuel online sales

Social Commerce

Charles

Charles raises $20M to bring conversational commerce to WhatsApp in Europe

Charles is a Berlin-based software company that provides a conversational commerce (cCommerce) platform for businesses to enable marketing and sales through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp. Launched in 2020, Charles allows merchants to offer personalized shopping experiences by integrating their ecommerce operations with chat app APIs. The platform facilitates product sales, newsletter distribution, and customer support via chat, seamlessly connecting systems like Shopify and Salesforce with messaging apps. Charles' technology aims to bring the ecommerce process into conversation channels like WhatsApp, bridging the gap between consumers and brands.

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to schedule, publish, monitor, and analyze social media content across multiple networks from a unified dashboard. Its key product offerings include content scheduling tools, social media monitoring and analytics, team collaboration features, social listening capabilities, and integrations with various social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Hootsuite's core functionality revolves around the ability to streamline social media management processes by centralizing various social media activities into a single platform. Its scheduling tools enable users to plan and queue content for publishing across different social networks, while its monitoring features facilitate tracking brand mentions, competitor activities, and audience engagement. The platform's analytics tools provide insights into social media performance, aiding users in understanding the effectiveness of their social media strategies.
Hootsuite also emphasizes team collaboration by allowing multiple users to access and manage social media accounts, assign roles and permissions, and implement approval workflows for content publishing. Additionally, its social listening capabilities enable users to monitor conversations, trends, and keywords relevant to their brand or industry.
While Hootsuite offers a free trial and a limited free plan, its more advanced features are available through paid subscription plans, with pricing tiers ranging from the Professional plan at USD 99 per month (billed annually) to the Enterprise plan tailored for larger organizations with custom pricing.

Hootsuite

GRIN is a comprehensive influencer marketing platform designed to help brands manage their influencer programs efficiently. It streamlines the entire process, from identifying and recruiting suitable influencers to facilitating product seeding, campaign management, content tracking, and performance reporting. GRIN's key features include a vast creator database, advanced search capabilities, Shopify integration for seamless product fulfillment, automated communication workflows, and robust analytics tools.
GRIN's platform allows brands to discover and connect with influencers across various social media channels, including Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. By leveraging GRIN's extensive database, brands can filter and search for influencers that align with their target audience and campaign goals. The platform's Shopify integration simplifies the process of sending products to influencers, creating trackable links, and generating discount codes.
Once influencers are on board, GRIN enables brands to create and manage campaigns, define deliverables, and automate communication sequences. The platform tracks influencer content, captures user-generated content (UGC), and provides detailed performance metrics, including engagement rates, conversions, and revenue generated. GRIN's reporting capabilities allow brands to analyze the success of their influencer campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
Key customers and partnerships
GRIN has collaborated with notable brands such as MVMT, a luxury watch company, Lume Cube, a specialty lighting brand, tentree, an apparel brand, Darn Good Yarn, Tubby Todd, and Hush Blankets. These partnerships demonstrate GRIN's ability to cater to diverse industries and support businesses in scaling their influencer marketing efforts.

GRIN

Bazaarvoice is a technology company that provides a Social Commerce AI suite, enabling brands to curate and showcase user-generated content across various social media platforms. Its flagship product, the Media Library, serves as a centralized hub for collecting, publishing, and managing social content from customers, influencers, partners, and the brand itself. This tool leverages AI-powered features to sort, tag, and prioritize high-performing media content, streamlining workflow and expediting legal approvals.
The company's Social Commerce AI suite offers a range of solutions to optimize social engagement and drive conversions. It generates on-brand photo captions, surfaces authentic user-generated content aligned with the brand's identity, and identifies top trends and themes for social media strategies. Bazaarvoice's Like2Buy solution allows brands to create shoppable Instagram and TikTok feeds, where visitors can browse products, read posts, and make purchases directly from the social storefront.
Additionally, Bazaarvoice's Showroom feature transforms photos and videos into interactive storefronts, enabling users to discover new products through visually appealing AI-powered experiences. This approach has proven effective, with 46% of Showroom visits converting to ecommerce sessions.
In terms of performance metrics, the company's solutions have demonstrated impressive results. Like2Buy visitors convert to ecommerce sessions at a rate of 59%, and these referred visitors tend to spend more time browsing, view more pages, and have higher average order values compared to average mobile consumers.

Bazaarvoice

NTWRK is a curated live video shopping platform that offers exclusive access to limited-edition products across various categories like sneakers, streetwear, collectibles, and more. It revolutionized the ecommerce industry by combining live streaming with online shopping, creating an engaging and interactive experience for consumers.
NTWRK's platform allows customers to watch live streams hosted by influencers, celebrities, or brand representatives who showcase and discuss the featured products. During these events, viewers can interact through live chat, ask questions, and make purchases seamlessly without leaving the video stream. This innovative approach provides transparency, fosters a sense of community, and creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity around the products on offer.
Since its inception in 2018, NTWRK has partnered with renowned artists, brands, and personalities such as Post Malone, Lewis Hamilton, BLACKPINK, and Takashi Murakami, offering their fans unprecedented access to exclusive collaborations and limited releases. The company has been at the forefront of the live stream shopping industry, which is estimated to reach USD 68 billion in sales by 2026 in the US alone.
In February 2024, NTWRK acquired the popular youth culture media company Complex, marking a significant step in its evolution. By merging Complex's content and reach with NTWRK's ecommerce platform, the combined entity aims to create a comprehensive digital hub for "superfan" culture, encompassing commerce, digital media, and music.
Key customers and partnerships
Through its strategic partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG), NTWRK gained access to industry-leading music labels like Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) and Capitol Music Group. This collaboration allows NTWRK to deliver exclusive collaborations and cultural experiences directly to passionate music fans, deepening the connection between artists and their audiences.
Notable partnerships include exclusive collaborations with BLACKPINK x Murakami and the Interscope 30th Anniversary vinyl collection, featuring dialogues between visual artists like Damien Hirst, Kehinde Wiley, and Ed Ruscha, and iconic Interscope artists from the past three decades.

NTWRK

ShopShops is a live-shopping platform that allows hosts to showcase and sell products in real-time to viewers through livestreaming. The company primarily focuses on the fashion and lifestyle segment, offering pre-owned luxury and designer brands. ShopShops' business model involves connecting retail brands with creators, referred to as hosts, who can represent and sell the brands' products through live video sessions.
The platform operates as a three-sided marketplace, facilitating the interaction between brands, hosts, and consumers. Brands can hire hosts on an hourly or event basis to showcase their products during live streams, providing a personalized shopping experience to viewers. This approach aims to bridge the gap between traditional retail and ecommerce by replicating an offline shopping experience online.
ShopShops initially launched in China in 2017 and observed consumer behavior similar to the early adoption phase of live shopping in that market. The company entered the US market in 2022, recognizing the growth potential as American consumers become more receptive to this shopping format. ShopShops anticipates that by 2024, major US brands will incorporate live streaming into their marketing strategies, following a similar trajectory to the adoption of platforms like TikTok.
While live shopping in the US is expected to be more segmented across vertical categories compared to China's more centralized platforms, ShopShops believes its focus on the female fashion and lifestyle vertical positions it well for success. The platform aims to expand into other verticals such as home and arts in the future.

ShopShops

Platforms for creating, scheduling, and managing a brand or independent seller’s social media presence. A number of these platforms also provide AI-powered social listening and data analytics tools to gauge customer sentiment.

AI-powered tools for automatically monitoring and responding to customer queries across multiple social media channels.

Platforms for identifying and managing influencers to promote and sell products and services through social media.

Tools typically used by influencers to demonstrate and sell products and services via social media. The solutions are the digital equivalents of live teleshopping programs.

Platforms for curating and displaying customer reviews, recommendations, and product and service feedback on a brand or independent sellers' social media pages and websites.

Tools to create and implement instant shopping features to an image or video advertisement

Increases transparency of the effectiveness of social commerce by providing solutions for attribution and measurement

Relevant for social chatbots segment that uses AI/ML to provide automated responses to customers

Creates virtual assets for Metaverse stores and marketing on metaverse platforms

Social media platforms such as Snap are developing AR solutions for live shopping experiences

Charles

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