BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alyce, a Personal Experience (PX) platform, today announced a $30 million Series B financing led by General Catalyst with participation from incumbent investors Boston Seed Capital, Golden Ventures, Manifest, Morningside and Victress Capital. The new financing brings Alyce’s total funding to date to $48M and fuels the company’s rapid growth through R&D, hiring, increased sales and customer support. The company also announced it has added General Catalyst’s Executive-in-Residence Lou Shipley to its board and Managing Partner Larry Bohn will become a board observer.
Alyce’s leading Personal Experience (PX) platform takes a recipient-first approach to corporate gifting, swag and direct mail. Its enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform provides an interactive physical or digital invitation to a virtual marketplace, and a secure redemption process so enterprises can authentically engage with prospects, customers, and employees in a thoughtful, relevant manner.
According to ASI Market Research, enterprises spend upwards of $24.7 billion annually on swag and promotional items. In 2020, the explosive growth of marketing automation coupled with brands doubling down on making digital connections amidst the work from home environment led to customers becoming inundated with generic offerings, digital noise and unwanted invites to virtual events.
“As everyone was flooded with spam last year unsubscribing soared. When a prospect opts out, that’s forever. It’s clear that both brands and customers crave the same thing - a much more purposeful and relatable way to engage,” said Greg Segall, founder and CEO of Alyce. “The Alyce platform puts the relationship at the center of every interaction creating authentic moments rather than impersonal ‘touches’. Building Personal Experiences are more respectful and sustainable because investments don’t end up in landfill or at the bottom of a closet, brands meaningfully connect with prospects or employees, and recipients greatly prefer being given choice. Those connections are what can convert a prospect to a customer.”
Not Your Parents’ Gifts and Swag
Alyce’s Swag Select™ service was designed to appeal to the more than 77% of brands that currently store and ship their own promotional items. The marketplace consists of nearly 10,000 physical products and experiences and relies on AI algorithms to filter and fulfill requests based on recipients’ individual interests. Once those are identified and applied, gifts are sent with personal notes and tracked every step through delivery. Integration with CRM, marketing technology such as Marketo and Vidyard, sales engagement platforms such as Salesforce, Outreach, and Salesloft combined with built-in analytics, enable sales and marketing teams to scale their outreach, pull insights to inform campaigns, outsource inventory management, and offer a wide variety of choices. Recipients can also choose to forgo gifts or swag altogether and donate to a charity of their choice, selecting from more than 1.4 million charities and growing through Alyce’s donation marketplace. Contributions grew 157% in 2020 and because the gifts are personal, the platform achieves a 96% delivery rate.
The Gift of Growth
Since its founding in 2015, Alyce’s annual revenue growth has consistently increased, topping 300% year-over-year growth from 2019 to 2020. The company’s growing customer base includes Marketo (an Adobe Company), G2, Lenovo, Wex, Invision, DialPad, GrubHub, and 6Sense.
“At General Catalyst, we are proud to lead the latest round of funding for Alyce as the company has reimagined the gifting category with technology and impact. The ability to deliver products and experiences that both the giver and recipient feel good about is incredibly powerful,” said Larry Bohn, Managing Director at General Catalyst.
Led by repeat entrepreneur CEO Greg Segall, Alyce’s team brings together operational, technical, sales and marketing and customer experience talent. In the past 12 months, the company strengthened its leadership bench with key executive hires including a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, General Counsel, Head of Marketing and Head of Product.
“Alyce has an impressively diverse workforce - nearly 50% of its team is female. The focus on authentic engagement really starts and expands out from its values and inherent culture of responsibility and respect,” said Suzanne Norris, Managing Partner of Victress Capital and Alyce board observer and investor. “Greg built Alyce’s model not just in response to an immense market need, but to address a bigger societal challenge of reducing waste and encouraging corporations to give back. Alyce helps corporations do so easily, making personalized engagement and human connection part of everyday operations.”
Alyce is headquartered in Boston and currently has nearly 170 employees across 7 countries. With the new capital, Alyce anticipates it will double its workforce in the next 12 months and continue its international expansion.
ABOUT ALYCE
Alyce creates authentic, Personal Experience moments through gifting, swag, and direct mail to help businesses grow at scale. As the only Personal Experience (PX) Platform, Alyce bridges the physical and digital worlds to enable Enterprise companies better engage, connect, and convert prospects and customers while delivering measurable results. We are proud and honored to be recognized by our customers 6 quarters in a row as Best Account-based Execution tool as well as recognition as Comparably’s Best Company for Women and Best Company Culture, Bostinno’s 50 on Fire start-ups, LinkedIn’s Top 50 start-ups of 2020 and Forbes 2021 Best Start-up Employer.
ABOUT GENERAL CATALYST
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: www.generalcatalyst.com.
