Florida-based community management platform Spontivly has announced multiple investments from venture capital companies across North America. With these investments, the company seeks to fund the integration between data analytics and online community management.
Co-founders Anthony Nagendraraj and Marissa Huggins started Spontivly in Edmonton in October 2019, as a platform to help international students adapt and feel part of the Canadian and university campus communities. Reportedly, over 6000 students signed up to the app within three months, making Spontivly one of the top ten most downloaded apps in Canada.
After the start of the pandemic, the company focused on providing a streamlined platform for businesses to build community and drive engagement by combining an organization’s community tools and insights from data analytics. Since then, it has migrated to Florida. “We were looking for a region/place that embodies ‘community’ and no one knows community better than southern US. The city of St. Petersburg really welcomed us with open arms,” said Nagendraraj.
Spontivly currently works with over 100 companies, seeking to build and expand an online community, and says that it has over 900 companies on its waitlist.
After a pre-seed funding round of US$1.2 million that ended in December 2021, the company continued receiving support in undisclosed investments from veteran investor Mark Cuban, venture firms Tampa Bay Ventures, Apex Ventures, Rezilyent Capital and founder of Hootsuite, Ryan Holmes. The company says that the investments are evidence of the rapidly-evolving industry that community management is, post pandemic.
“Spontivly provides the tools necessary for developing engaged communities, regardless of platform,” said general partner at Tampa Bay Ventures, Andreas Calabrese. “We see a tremendous opportunity for Spontivly to become the default community management layer in the immediate future.”
