End-to-end event platform Delegate Connect has raised $10 million in seed capital in its first-ever funding round.
The round was one of Australia’s largest seed rounds, and for AirTree Ventures, who led the round, it was the biggest seed cheque written in the fund’s history.
The round also included investment from Skip Capital, the private fund of Kim Jackson and Scott Farquhar (co-founder of Atlassian), along with investment fund TEN13.
Founders of some of Australia’s top startups, including Alex Zaccaria (CEO and founder of LinkTree) and Andrew Barnes (CEO and founder of Go1) have also joined the oversubscribed funding round.
The company said its end-to-end event platform has had rapid uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having found a loyal base of clients already, including the Edinburgh TV Festival, Sportsbet and the World Dental Congress, Delegate Connect intends to use the funds to further fuel international growth and expand its existing headcount from 45 in their Melbourne, London and Norway offices to over 100 with an additional 65 roles by December 2021.
The opening of a US-based office is also planned for the next few months.
“We have clients around the world who love using our platform because it is built to solve the exact problems they are faced with,” said Jordan Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Delegate Connect.
“With the incredible demand we’re seeing for our services from overseas, we’re looking forward to building out our teams there to be closer to our customers and continue to provide an end-to-end solution for events globally.”
The platform has features such as automatic tracking and accreditation of continuing professional development points, as well as the ability to run unlimited concurrent streams of content.
These features are vital to servicing industries they’re seeing increased demand from, including pharmaceutical companies, medical associations and corporate sectors.
“This year, we’ve held hundreds of large scale virtual and hybrid conferences on the platform,” Walsh said.
“In August, the World Library and Information Congress was held on the Delegate Connect platform, attracting 4,000 delegates. Our technology was able to deliver the whole three-day conference live across three different time zones and in seven different languages.
“Bringing on an incredible group of investors enables us to continue to push the limits of what is possible in event technology, and we are so excited to share some of the world-first features that we will be launching over the coming months.”
