500 Global is a multi-stage venture capital firm with US$2.4 billion in assets under management that invests in founders building fast-growing technology companies. We focus on markets where technology, innovation, and capital can unlock long-term value and drive economic growth. We work closely with key stakeholders and advise governments on how best to support entrepreneurial ecosystems so startups can thrive. 500 Global has backed over 5,000 founders representing more than 2,800 companies operating in 80+ countries. We have invested in 35+ companies valued at over US$1 billion and 160+ companies valued at over US$100 million (including private, public, and exited companies). Our 190+ team members are located in over 25 countries and bring experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and operators from some of the world’s leading technology companies. (*as of June 30, 2023)

500 Global

Skywell Capital Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs with visionary ideas around the globe. We are looking for entrepreneurs who are building ground-breaking and sustainable businesses that are going to change the world.

Skywell Capital Partners

Flint Capital is an international venture capital fund investing across the US, Europe, and Israel with offices in Boston, and Tel Aviv. It invests in promising entrepreneurs and technology ventures with global ambitions. Its unique global positioning enables them to support Israeli and European ventures on both sides of the ocean, as they expand into the US market. This Bridge strategy and its broad network of entrepreneurs, industry experts, and investment funds provide them with access to high-quality investment opportunities.

Flint Capital

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. Their portfolio includes pinterest, shopify, twilio, yelp, linkedin, pagerduty, docusign, wix, fiverr, and toast, and has $19 billion of assets under management.

Bessemer Venture Partners

Manychat

Manychat helps businesses do marketing, sales and support through Facebook Messenger. It helps businesses create a chatbot in in 5 minutes without coding. Manychat powers over 100'000 bots on Facebook Messenger and is the leader in messenger marketing space. The company makes it easy to grow Messenger audience by providing a complete set of tools to convert anyone into a subscriber.

ManyChat is a chatbot creator for social media and SMS, purpose-built for marketing and sales functions. ManyChat allows customers to have automated, interactive two-way conversations with their audience via Instagram direct message and Facebook messenger. ManyChat’s platform has a drag and drop interface to create chatbots with no coding experience required. The chatbots can be used to automatically capture client information such as emails and phone numbers, and connect with customers via SMS and email. The platform can also be integrated with technology tools, such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Shopify. The platform is available for free for customers to engage with up to 1,000 contacts as well as a paid “pro” subscription option that scales with the number of contacts and offers additional features. As of October 2021, the platform is used by one million customers, resulting in more than one billion conversations every year.

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

<div>ManyChat is a chatbot creator for social media and SMS, enabling customers to have automated, interactive two-way conversations with their audience via Instagram direct message and Facebook Messenger. ManyChat’s platform has a drag-and-drop interface to create chatbots with no coding experience required. The chatbots can be used to automatically capture client information, such as emails and phone numbers, and connect with customers via SMS and email. The platform can also be integrated with technology tools, such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Shopify. The platform is used by more than one million customers, resulting in more than one billion conversations every year.</div>

Harnessing the power of social influence to fuel online sales

Social Commerce

ManyChat

MarTech Interview with Mike Yan, CEO and Co-founder at ManyChat

ManyChat is a chatbot creator for social media and SMS, purpose-built for marketing and sales functions. ManyChat allows customers to have automated, interactive two-way conversations with their audience via Instagram direct message and Facebook messenger. ManyChat’s platform has a drag and drop interface to create chatbots with no coding experience required. The chatbots can be used to automatically capture client information such as emails and phone numbers, and connect with customers via SMS and email. The platform can also be integrated with technology tools, such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Shopify. The platform is available for free for customers to engage with up to 1,000 contacts as well as a paid “pro” subscription option that scales with the number of contacts and offers additional features. As of October 2021, the platform is used by one million customers, resulting in more than one billion conversations every year.In October 2020, the firm announced its partnership with Whatsapp, further extending its reach across channels to drive sales and respond to customer queries. Building on this partnership, the firm launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10368">whatsapp marketing automation solution </a>in May 2022.According to the firm, its customers have experienced, on average, an 80% open rate by using its platform and reduced the incidence of abandoned carts by recovering on average USD 154 per cart.In April 2020, the firm acquired Convalytics, an analytics tracking company for ecommerce, for an undisclosed amount, and has been fully integrated into ManyChat’s platform.

<div>
 
 Outbrain is an algorithm-based content recommendation and discovery platform that curates native advertising content from the open web, providing personalized content for brands to increase customer engagement. Outbrain&rsquo;s customers include leading news media outlets such as CNN, MSN, and Sky News, serving more than a billion monthly users (by September 2021). Outbrain also allows content publishers to amplify its reach by supplying content to the platform. As of September 2021, customers could access 7,000+ online content sources including content by the Washington Post, Guardian, and BBC.&nbsp;
 
 
 Outbrain has been a pioneer in the content recommendation space and was the first to introduce an algorithm-based content recommendation in 2008. It was also the first to introduce a self-service platform for content recommendation in 2012. Outbrain has made a series of acquisitions over the years while making enhancements to its product offerings. In May 2021, it tested &ldquo;QualityRatings,&rdquo; a tool that implements quality guidelines for the content featured on its platform while using machine learning and AI to create a more personalized user experience. In April 2022, Outbrain&rsquo;s platform was 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9907">
 integrated with ID5
 </a>
 to provide a privacy-first customer identification solution. In September 2022, the firm launched 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13122">
 Keystone
 </a>
 , a business optimization solution for publishers. In November 2021, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6992">
 Outbrain acquired vi
 </a>
 , a contextual video intelligence platform for USD 55 million to grow it's CTV and other display ads offerings. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Outbrain&rsquo;s revenue model is structured as a &ldquo;pay per click&rdquo; model with the revenue being shared with publishers of the content. In FY 2022, the firm 
 reported a revenue of USD 992.1 million (a 2% YoY dip). For the 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16860">
 full year of 2023E,
 </a>
 the firm expected to achieve a minimum Ex-TAC gross profit of USD 237 million and generate an adjusted EBITDA of at least USD 28 million. 
 
 
 Outbrain was listed on the NASDAQ in July 2021, where it raised USD 160 million at a valuation of USD 1.25 billion. Ahead of its listing, Outbrain also raised USD 200 million in the form of senior subordinated secured notes from Baupost Group. Since then the firms share price has fallen steeply, and as of July 2022 the firm was&nbsp; worth USD 300 million, equivalent to a ~75% drop in its value. In response, Outbrain is reported to have 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11880">
 shed ~3% of its total workforce
 </a>
 . 
 
</div>

Outbrain

<div>
 
 Marin Software is an adTech firm offering a suite of solutions for brands looking to conduct search, social media, and ecommerce advertising. The firm&rsquo;s &ldquo;MarineOne&rdquo; solution enables Brands to integrate their data under a single platform; coupled with machine learning tools, marketers can optimize ad spending across multiple platforms. In the case of search and social media advertising, Brands can increase their visibility across a number of search engines and social media platforms including Google, Facebook, and Apple Search Ads.&nbsp;
 
 
 In recent years the firm has been making enhancements to transform its Marine One Software as a complete marketing campaign management &amp; intelligence solution. In line with the firm expanded its ecommerce advertising solution capabilities by increasing the number of integrations to include Criteo&rsquo;s commerce media platform and Instacart&rsquo;s advertising platform. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12159">
 2022
 </a>
 , the firm rolled out a number of new product and features including 1) MarinOne bidding, the firm's ad bidding marketplace, 2) MarinOne support, to enable advertisers to improve ad performance with multi-edit ad scheduling solutions, 3) social rules engine, to help automate workflows, and 4) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15019">
 Budget Optimizer
 </a>
 , an ad budget management solution. More 
 recently, in April 2023, the firm introduced an automation tool 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17565">
 &ldquo;MarinOne Scripts,&rdquo;
 </a>
 which integrates Python scripting with its MarineOne platform, providing marketers with customized and data-driven solutions to optimize campaigns.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of October 2021, several brands from varied industries, including Nissan, American Eagle outfitters, and Harmony, use the firm&rsquo;s solutions.
 
 
 In 2021, the firm made a number of new initiatives in 2021, including an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7635">
 integration with Amazon Ads
 </a>
 and a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6973">
 partnership with CitrusAd 
 </a>
 to expand the ecommerce capabilities of its platform. More recently, in January 2023, the company announced an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16172">
 integration with Yahoo
 </a>
 to broaden access to programmatic ad content. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Marin Software was listed on the NASDAQ in March 2013, raising USD 105 million and was valued at USD 432 million. However, since then the firm has been experiencing a decline in performance; in 2022, the firm recorded a revenue of 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16613?industryIds=62">
 USD 20 million (a 18% YoY drop)
 </a>
 compared to the ~USD 100 million revenue in 2016. The reasons analysts cite for this are 1) weaknesses in its search advertising model and 2) not selling digital ads, which is a growth area for lead generation firms.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

Marin Software

<div>
 
 Founded in China, Terminus claims to have the first account-based marketing (ABM) platform that unifies the marketing and sales teams&rsquo; roles under a single platform. Terminus specializes in B2B marketing and, according to the firm, its &ldquo;Terminus Data Studio&rdquo; has one of the largest B2B account databases, which by September 2021, covered more than 70 million businesses. Terminus&rsquo;s customer data platform (CDP) is fully integrated with its marketing automation platform, through which teams can run multi-channel targeted campaigns across many channels including email, ad networks, live chat, and the web. This can then be analyzed with Terminus&rsquo; suite of analytics and attribution tools. In March 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17406">
 launched Prospect Engine,
 </a>
 a new data solution, to help users identify high-quality accounts and contacts displaying buying signals. 
 By September 2021, Terminus served more than 1,000 customers, including Salesloft, Foundry, and Quantum Workplace.
 
 
 According to a study done by Forrester (in Q2 2020), Terminus has been recognized among the ABM platform leaders. 
 
 
 Through a series of acquisitions, Terminus has transformed into a marketing cloud platform offering a range of services. Its two latest acquisitions took place within 12 months. In November 2020, it acquired Growflare, a lead generation and account-based intelligence platform catering to B2B startups, followed by B2B CDP Zylotech in September 2021. Terminus hoped to capitalize on these to build the most comprehensive ABM platform on the market.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Terminus raised USD 50 million in debt financing from CIBC innovation banking in November 2021. The funding was used to support international expansion, product development, and further acquisitions. In February 2021 when it raised USD 90 million in Series C funding, it was valued at approximately USD 400 million.
 
</div>

Terminus

<div>
 
 Founded in France, Brevo 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18241">
 (formerly Sendinblue)
 </a>
 began as an email marketing automation platform catering to small and medium-scale businesses (SMB). It has since extended its services to become an all-in-one marketing platform catering to 300,000+ customers across 180 countries by end December 2022. The range of services found on Brevo&rsquo;s platform includes email and SMS marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, landing page creation, and Facebook ad management, among others. In November 2022, the firm launched an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14388">
 integrated meetings solution
 </a>
 that brings together scheduling, video conferencing, and payment solutions. In March 2023, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17462">
 unveiled &ldquo;Conversations&rdquo;
 </a>
 to manage customer conversations across messaging channels in one centralized location.
 
 
 Brevo&rsquo;s platform is compared with other well-known competitors such as Mailchimp and Hubspot and is commended for its live support and fair pricing, making it a strong contender in the SMB space.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has expanded its product offering through a series of acquisitions during 2021-2022. Brevo acquired three firms in September 2021 for USD 47 million: 1) Metrilo, a provider of customer analytics and marketing services for ecommerce stores, 2) Chatra, a live chat messenger app for increasing online sales, and 3) PushOwl, a customer re-engagement website that uses web-based push notifications. In March 2022, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9009">
 acquired MeetFox
 </a>
 , a meeting scheduling and video conferencing platform. In September 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13360">
 acquired Yodel.io,
 </a>
 an Austrian cloud-based phone system provider, to enable additional customer touchpoints, and reduce the overall digital marketing spend for SMBs. In February 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16271?industryIds=62">
 acquired Captain Wallet,
 </a>
 a mobile wallet marketing platform, to broaden its reach internationally. In December 2023, 
 Brevo
 acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24833">
 WonderPush and Octolis,
 </a>
 two customer interaction platforms, to expand its CRM capabilities.
 &nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 Brevo raised USD 160 million in its Series B round in September 2020 with participation from Bridgepoint, Bpifrance, Blackrock, and Partech. The firm planned to utilize the funds to increase its presence in the US, where it has experienced a 100% YoY growth since 2018. 
 
 
 The firm achieved 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15834">
 USD 100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
 </a>
 at the end of 2022 while maintaining a positive EBITDA position.&nbsp;
 
</div>

Brevo

Acquia provides a digital experience platform (DXP) to support medium to large enterprises that use Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS) that provides the back-end infrastructure for websites and by September 2021, powered approximately 2.1% of websites on the internet. The core product offered by Acquia is a marketing cloud that provides a full suite of services to manage the customer journey. The platform features a customer data platform (CDP), unifying data across multiple sources; sales automation tools to deliver personalized marketing campaigns across multiple delivery channels; marketing campaign management tools to manage distributed marketing teams; and a content management platform to organize and monitor content.Having been built on the Drupal framework, which does not require any programming skills to implement, Acquia’s marketing cloud claims to be more accessible and agile than enterprise cloud solutions provided by incumbents such as Adobe and Oracle. In 2021, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report named Acquia a leader in DXP platforms, while a study done by Forrester (in July 2021) found that customers of Acquia’s DXP solutions experienced a payback on their investment in less than six months, generating an average return on investment (ROI) of 589% over three years.Acquia has made several investments and enhancements to its DXP platform. In January 2021, Acquia, in partnership with Commercetools and Lucidworks, launched “Acquia Digital Commerce,” a service for creating personalized digital shopping experiences for customers. The firm has also added a number of self-serve features to its CDP such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11422">“right to erasure” </a>to bolster the privacy and security features of its platform to cater to enterprise users. In May 2024, Acquia announced the launch of its enhanced digital experience platform, <a href="https://">Acquia Digital Experience Optimization (DXO),</a> which optimizes digital marketing spend by improving the performance of digital experiences. In September 2021, Acquia acquired Widen Enterprises, a digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) software company, for an undisclosed amount. As a result, customers can have a fully integrated experience on the platform, while the acquisition also added a further 700+ customers. In November 2023, the company acquired Monsido, a website accessibility and optimization solution from CivicPlus, to expand its platform capabilities.Key customers and partnershipsBy September 2021, Acquia counted one in four Fortune 500 companies, including Johnson &amp; Johnson, Bayer, and Xerox, among its customers.In June 2022, Acquia <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11352">partnered with Workato </a>(enterprise-level workflow automation platform) to integrate with Acquia’s CDP to expand enterprise use of the platform. The integration added 100+ technology integrations compatible with Acquia’s marketing cloud.Funding and financialsAcquia was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in September 2019 for USD 1 billion.

Acquia

Firms positioned as an 'all-in-one' marketing platform,  providing a variety of functions across the MarTech stack

Startups providing platforms for planning and managing marketing campaigns.

Startups offering tools for finding and attracting potential customers with targeted ads.

Startups providing tools to automate the execution of marketing campaigns across varied channels.

Startups providing tools for gathering, cleaning and enhancing customer data to provide deep analytics.

Uses AI/ML to enable marketing automation, making it a core part of many companies' products

Metaverse advertising is being explored by AdTech segments for in-game advertising

Personalization tools are mainly used in AdTech and marketing campaign automation

Marketing automation provides measurement and attribution solutions to measure marketing effectiveness

The in-game advertising segment is in development and has a niche relevance to this area

<div>
 
 ManyChat is a chatbot creator for social media and SMS, enabling customers to have automated, interactive two-way conversations with their audience via Instagram direct message and Facebook Messenger. ManyChat’s platform has a drag-and-drop interface to create chatbots with no coding experience required. The chatbots can be used to automatically capture client information, such as emails and phone numbers, and connect with customers via SMS and email. The platform can also be integrated with technology tools, such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Shopify. The platform is used by more than one million customers, resulting in more than one billion conversations every year. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Hootsuite is a Canadian platform that allows marketers to manage social media campaigns across a range of popular channels including Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube, and Twitter from a single dashboard. The platform provides automated campaign scheduling and boosting, a unified platform to respond to customer comments as well as analytics tools to monitor and evaluate the success of campaigns. Through acquisitions, the firm has expanded its product offerings to include conversational commerce solutions including Heyday AI, a customer conversational platform, and Central, a customer inquiry management platform for social media channels. The firm had more than 210,000 paid users as of October 2021.
 
</div>

Hootsuite

<div>
 
 GRIN is a creator management platform specialized for influencer marketing. Its platform has solutions for brands to help discover creators by providing a network base of social media users and allows creators to email and ship products as well as engage in content repurposing. It also offers a comprehensive range of reporting tools. Features of the platform include reporting and analytics, discovery and recruitment, and content management. In addition, the firm's platform integrates with ecommerce and payment solutions to provide product seeding and payment solutions. GRIN’s clientele includes Lorna Jane, Tonal, L’Oreal, Bellami, Cotton On, Legendary Foods, Organifi, Rockstar Energy Drink, and Black Rifle Coffee Company.
 
</div>

GRIN

<div>
 
 Bazaarvoice delivers a people-first approach to advanced technology that connects thousands of brands and retailers to the voices of customers. Its solutions center on collecting content, driving customer conversions, amplifying content, and optimizing strategies. Additionally, its solutions are geared toward collecting content, driving revenue, scaling brands, obtaining actionable insights, and building loyalty. Bazaarvoice is trusted by over 11,500 brands and retailers. It serves the apparel and accessories, consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, and health and beauty industries. The company’s operations span the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific region. It was acquired by Thomas H. Lee Partners in 2021.
 
 
 
</div>

Bazaarvoice

<div>
 
 Viewpoints is a consumer review and product ranking website that helps customers shop smarter based on consumer reviews. Its website has nearly one million reviews written by over 250,000 contributors. The firm translates these unfiltered, authentic end-user insights into product intelligence in the form of scores, rankings, and recommendations. The company offers reviews under the kitchen appliances, laundry and cleaning, home and garden, bath, health, money, babies and kids, and beauty categories. Its solutions are used by a number of global brands including Hamilton Beach, Dove, Cuisinart, Tide, Whirlpool, Progressive, Serta, and Weber.
 
</div>

ViewPoints

<div>
 
 NTWRK is a livestream shopping platform that offers a platform for retailing goods and interacting with consumers in real time. The mobile-based video platform uses brand partnerships and special product drops to create shopping-related content that targets Gen-Z and Millennial users. It features famous brands and creators on its platform through live episodes that showcase sneakers, sports memorabilia, fashion, art, and collectibles. NTWRK recently began investing in original shows in order to improve engagement and has built multiple sets to carry out its polished programming initiatives. The firm has attracted investments from Goldman Sachs and Kering, the owners of luxury brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta.
 
</div>

NTWRK

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

ManyChat

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