The only platform for video communications that runs completely in a browser also includes end-to-end features for planning, promoting, executing and measuring ROI for video meetings and events
Livestorm, which is transforming online events with the first video communications platform that runs completely in a mobile or desktop browser, announced today that it has raised a $30M Series B funding round to accelerate product development and its expansion into North America. The round was led by Aglaé Ventures and Bpifrance Digital Venture, with participation from Raise Ventures and IDInvest. This brings Livestorm’s total amount raised to date to $35M.
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The four-year-old company, based in Paris, grew its revenue by 8x since its last funding round in 2019 and tripled its head count to 50+. Currently, about one-third of Livestorm’s customers are in the U.S., which is the fastest-growing region for the company.
Livestorm’s platform allows businesses to host meetings or webinars from two to thousands of participants in a browser (desktop or mobile). Livestorm can adapt to any kind of online event (online training courses, product demos, conferences), and manage it from end to end, from promotion through post-event ROI analysis. More than 3,500 companies from startups to Fortune 500 companies rely on Livestorm, including brands such as Shopify, Honda and Sephora.
“We immediately recognized that Livestorm is the HubSpot for video communications,” said Cyril Guenoun, Partner at Aglaé Ventures. “Video and online events have become essential in 2020 and are here to stay. The Livestorm platform thrives in this environment, providing a seamless solution for meetings and events with all the connectors that marketing, sales, customer service and HR pros need to make video a tightly integrated part of their communications strategies. We’re really excited about the growth potential for Livestorm, especially as they expand their footprint in the U.S.”
Livestorm addresses four main issues that have plagued traditional online meeting and event platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and GoToWebinar:
- User experience and complexity:Â Other platforms often require an app for hosts and attendees, causing barriers to joining events, especially for those on a mobile device or restricting networks. Livestorm is designed to operate completely in a mobile or desktop browser, with no apps needed for anyone, with minimal IT configuration.
- Event setup in minutes not hours: Many platforms focus only on the video experience but Livestorm helps run any external or internal event from end-to-end. Events are ready out of the box with features for promotion, hosting, reporting and retargeting. Customers can set up their events with landing page creation tools, send promotional emails, automate email reminders or create custom registration forms, all in one platform.
- Capturing event data to leverage for future marketing:Â Traditional webinar platforms at best may generate a spreadsheet of registration data. Livestorm offers advanced reporting to measure your events engagement and understand your audience. That data can be leveraged by third-party integrations, including Zapier, for future marketing campaigns.
- Security:Â Installing applications often comes with a risk. Working on a browser offers, by design, advantages including having multiple layers of security from the browser itself.
Livestorm will be using the funding to rapidly increase its marketing presence and scale its go to market strategies toward mid-market and enterprise in the U.S., while hiring aggressively both in Europe and the U.S.
Livestorm Co-founder and CEO Gilles Bertaux created Livestorm after working as part of a marketing group that struggled to promote and measure ROI for online events. Bertaux found he was spending most of his time creating landing pages, promoting events and troubleshooting attendees’ connection issues, and did not have the means to connect online events to real business outcomes.
“We created Livestorm to address the need for more robust video communications tools, and saw great market traction,” said Bertaux. “In 2020, as hordes of companies turned to online events and meetings for the first time due to COVID-19, Livestorm was well-positioned to earn that business. Over the next year, we want to build a Slack-like marketplace of plugins for our platform, an ecosystem where developers will be able to easily build on top of Livestorm.”
In 2021, Livestorm plans to once again triple its head count, hiring 100 more professionals across engineering, sales, support and marketing. “We are ramping up our U.S. presence quickly,” said Bertaux, “to take advantage of all the demand.”
