Attendify, developed by KitApps Inc., is a self-service platform for building private social networks for events. With Attendify, an event planner can easily create a branded Facebook-like app for a conference, which will let people connect, message each other, post pictures, engage with the content, check the up-to-date schedule. Also, Attendify offers built-in monetization features, such as sponsored posts and polls the organizers can run for their own purposes or for sponsors.
The startup received a $1 M in a bridge round led by Digital Future with follow-on participation from the existing investor TMT Investments. Also, Digital Future paid an additional $700K to acquire an equity stake from an early private investment. In 2013 and 2014, TMT has already invested $400,000 in the startup. The money will be poured into further product development and boosting marketing and sales.
Ukranian Mobile Event App Builder Attendify Raises Seed Funding, Releases Social Features
Each year millions of small and large conferences, meetings, trade shows and seminars are held around the globe, with
around 2 million events in the United States only. Globally, the size of the industry is estimated at $565 billion annually, and to leverage this spending and bring more value to the attendees in the era of Facebook, the organizers needed an app. However, the majority of them wouldn’t want or couldn’t afford to create custom apps.
Founded in 2011 by two Ukrainians Artyom Yaremchuk and Michael Balyasny, the platform has quickly gained one of its first “big name” clients: Cisco used Attendify to create an app for Cisco Expo 2011. Then came Google, Bloomberg, Autodesk, Pepsi, Chrysler, AstraZeneca, MIT, Stanford, American Express, AOL Disney and many others.
Event apps bring a social dimension to the event, boost attendee engagement, and together with practical features such as connecting and scheduling meetings, it adds an element of fun and shared experiences. For instance, AstraZeneca, a pharma company with more than 20,000 employees, is using the service for its internal events. Artyom commented that he didn’t expect that pharmacists would be so active posting a lot of pictures both from presentations and after-parties: for 500 people 3,000 pictures were posted, and people kept using the app even after the event, which is not typical for the industry.
The app costs $999 per event.
