Backers get to grips with Grip to help make more matches

Just as an ecosystem of auxiliary services apps is building itself around Airbnb in the ‘short stay’ market, it looks like much the same is happening in the ‘virtual events’ universe.

Arguably, at the centre of the cluster is UK superstar, Hopin (see UK ‘double-unicorn’ Hopin doubles up on acquisitions and work back), and London-based, Grip is one of the helper apps hopping into the ecosphere.

Founded in 2016, self-styled ‘smart event matchmaker’ Grip concentrates on the networking side of events (real as well as virtual). From what I can see from a quick squizz at its website, Grip seems to cover pretty much the whole 'matchmaking' shebang from moment a punter get a foot in the door.

Founded in 2014 as Intros.At (its formal company name – which to my mind is rather more illustrative than its market-facing brand), Grip has just announced a $13m Series A funding round, led by Kennet Partners. This brings the total raised to date to $14.5m (Source: TechCrunch).

There are event management platforms which handle networking as well, of course, such as Brella (which, by the way, pays Google to top the search results if you key in ‘hopin’). But founder and CEO Tim Groot pitches Grip as a plug-in for other event management platforms to handle the networking side of things.

This makes a lot of sense to me – and clearly to its extensive client list too, which includes many top-tier event management companies and venues. And keeping itself ‘event management platform agnostic’ (my words, not theirs), may help keep Grip in rude health as an independent platform for some time yet.

Posted by: Anthony Miller at 18:45

Tags: funding   startup  

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