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.
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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.
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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.”
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