Skift Take
Networking-focused hybrid event platform Brella has announced a $10 million in new funding led by Connected Capital and returning investors Vendep Capital. The Finland-based company will use the funds to develop year-round approaches to hybrid events.
Brella is one of several companies to pivot to a virtual event platform in 2020. The company proudly reports that it was able to evolve from an app-based networking platform to a networking-focused hybrid event platform in just one month. It also boasts a 4x growth in annual revenue for 2020.
The $10 million Series A round of funding is led by Connected Capital who were clearly impressed with Brella’s pivot. “Their agility and ability to turn the most insurmountable challenges into new opportunities is truly exceptional”, said Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Connected Capital Mathijs Robbens.
Returning investors Vendep Capital continue to back the company’s development and demonstrated a bullish view on hybrid events. “With this funding, Brella is now positioned to become the category leader for hybrid events. We are excited to be supporting this journey.” said Sakari Pihlava, General Partner at Vendep Capital.
Despite its remarkable growth in 2020, Brella has opted to take on additional funding in order to build further capabilities. The company is looking to support digitally enhanced in-person events, and hybrid events that contain both live and virtual components, formats which it believes will be staples of the post-pandemic event industry.
Brella stated it will use the funds to invest in creating extended 365 community/hybrid features that will extend the life of an event long after the live content has ended. It will also look to continue to improve the product’s networking features as well as develop new monetization opportunities with a special focus on improving sponsor retention rates.
Brella is clearly doubling down on becoming the leading networking-focused hybrid event platform. They continue to build an impressive client list that includes some of the largest companies in B2B events including Informa, Marcus Evans, Questex, and IQPC.
Its success may be linked to Brella’s unique, and perhaps stereotypically Finish, approach to their product. Brella’s platform focuses on distilling the essence of live business event experiences and translating them into an intuitive digital format. As CEO and Founder Markus Kauppinen puts it, “we aren’t in the business of impressing event organizers with needlessly long feature lists”.
