First platform built for B2B marketers that gives actionable account based insights for sales teams and monitors pipeline impact
Goldcast, the purpose-built platform for B2B field and event marketers to host interactive virtual and hybrid events, today announced the closing of a $10 million seed funding round led by Unusual Ventures with participation from Hubspot Ventures, Afore Capital, Underscore VC and angels including Scott Belsky (CPO, Adobe), Manik Gupta (Corporate Vice President, Microsoft), Chandar Pattabhiram (CMO, Coupa), Elissa Fink (former CMO, Tableau), Elias Torres (Co-founder, Drift), Sangram Vajre (Co-founder, Terminus), Kris Rudeegraap (Co-founder, Sendoso), Guillaume “𝑮” Cabane (GP, Hypergrowth Partners), Lenny Rachitsky (ex-Product Lead, Airbnb). Sandhya Hegde of Unusual Ventures will join the board. This new injection of capital will be used to continue developing the product offering and expand Goldcast’s already rapidly growing customer base.
B2B technology companies spend an average of 25 to 40 percent of their budgets on marketing events each year to meet their pipeline goals. The number of virtual events rose by at least 1,000 percent due to the pandemic and 75 percent of marketers believe that hybrid events will be the way forward. However, 85 percent of strategic marketers believe there’s room for improvement in how events are leveraged. This is mainly because events are a “black box” when it comes to revenue impact. Existing event platforms don’t drill down into the deep, account-based insights that help growth-focused teams optimize and measure the ROI on their events, forcing businesses to leave money on the table.
Goldcast is building a platform for B2B marketers, primarily event and demand gen teams that use events as an important Go-To-Market channel to meet their pipeline goals. The company took inspiration from Netflix to deliver a user experience that has high production values and puts the brand in the spotlight. Marketers can use Goldcast to host a range of events from small monthly webinars to large scale user conferences in virtual and hybrid formats. Apart from the exceptional attendee experience, Goldcast provides powerful and actionable account-based insights that sales teams can use for their post event follow ups for better MQL to SQL conversions.
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Goldcast is solving for everything a B2B marketer needs, from creating an experience as engaging as a TV show, to integrating with existing marketing automation and CRMs to track all attendee activity and monitor the pipeline contribution of events. The company has grown 10x over the last year and hundreds of marketing teams from fast-growing companies such as Drift, Salesloft, and Attentive and public companies such as Weave, Toast, Avalara, and Microsoft GitHub are using Goldcast to host engaging events and create qualified opportunities for their sales teams.
“Event marketing has evolved immensely over the past decade. It used to be about brand visibility and top-of-the-funnel leads, but now it’s a way for prospects to personally engage with the brand and the product, helping seal the deal in their minds long before a contract is signed. At a time when we’re all starved for human connection, event and field marketers are under more pressure to show up better, stronger, and more consistently for their customers than ever before.” said Palash Soni, CEO and co-founder of Goldcast. “The problem is that events have traditionally lacked clear KPIs, and it’s been essentially impossible to track their effectiveness and answer many CEOs’ million-dollar question: ‘what is the impact of event spend?’ We were extremely excited when events started to have a digital component because of the insights and analytics that can be gathered easily– data that was nonexistent at in-person events. The Goldcast platform gives event marketers superpowers they’ve never had before: to validate their work and measure how their programs are impacting revenue by gathering and organizing customer engagement data in real-time.”
“It is getting harder for companies to stand out using channels such as email and paid ads to drive demand. We strongly believe event experiences, be it digital or hybrid, are going to be the best channel for companies to engage with their prospects and customers in a meaningful way. CMOs have now realized that and are starting to invest in it. This gives event marketers the opportunity to take a front seat in the marketing team and drive revenue growth,” said Kishore Kothandaraman, COO and co-founder of Goldcast.
“There is a massive shift happening in b2b marketing. Today, no one wants to read gated content, and nurture emails don’t make it to the priority inbox. Virtual events are the new, scalable engagement channel. Whatever GTM role you have – whether it’s in marketing, community or sales – Goldcast helps you easily organize great events that engage and nurture your audience with a data platform for clear attribution to revenue,” said Sandhya Hegde, partner at Unusual Ventures.
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