Today, I’m thrilled to announce our $9M Series A, led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital with continued support from Corazon Capital, Freestyle VC, Oversubscribed Ventures and other great institutional partners.
How we got here:
Our goal since launching in 2020 is to empower people to create incredible experiences together. We brought this vision to life by building a mobile app that provides planning tools to seamlessly coordinate a trip paired with a marketplace to book experiences. Even with the challenges that come with being a travel tech company that launched two months prior to covid, the data gathered prior to the world shutting down combined with our team’s work ethic gave us the horsepower to double down on creating a product and marketplace that we believe will change the way that groups travel.
As vaccines became more widely available in 2021, we saw an immediate boost in our traction. What surprised us the most, however, was how many people were writing to us about how much they loved the app; describing in detail the headaches saved by the planning tools and the confidence it gave people to plan a trip for their friends and loved ones. On top of that, even though the marketplace was limited to a few cities in the beginning, people were booking… a lot. To the point where we were becoming supply constrained!
Fast forward to 2022, we worked ruthlessly to build the backend technology to scale bookings in the marketplace, launched 14 cities with high quality experiences, and kept improving the product experience. In doing so, we saw 4x growth YOY and over 1 Million people using our app last year.
Where we’re going
Now that we’ve built all the infrastructure, it’s time to serve the entire bachelorette market. In gathering 50,000 itinerary events per month and hosting 200,000 parties last year, we have a clear blueprint to further expand a product and marketplace that our bachelorettes will continue to love.
Here are the three growth themes we’re focused on for the first half of this year:
• Launch of more cities and new marketplace verticals. We’ll have 30 cities live and we’re expanding the range of offerings available to book on BATCH with the goal of 3,000 experiences going live in 2023.
• Make it easier to find and book incredible experiences on BATCH. In a few weeks, we’re launching ‘Batch on Web’ (sneak peek). Launching a web version of our marketplace will make it easier to find us on the internet and view/book experiences.
• Build content that positions BATCH to be the go-to platform for your weekend plans. Whenever you’re considering a fun trip with friends, we want BATCH to be the place that gives you all the inspiration to guide your trip.
We have a lot of love for the BATCH community
BATCH Experience Vendors: Our data reports an average of a 40% revenue boost for the top 50 vendors in our marketplace. It’s been amazing to help empower entrepreneurs in our cities and to see their businesses scale up as a result of BATCH.
Our BATCH parties: It’s important to us that we don’t lose sight of the opportunity to deliver an amazing experience to bachelorette parties in 2023. We’ve built a product that has an 88% CSAT and 4.8 rating in the app store. Maintaining that customer love as we grow remains our #1 focus. We believe that ultimately, we’re building a marketplace for all types of groups to plan a trip together and book incredible experiences. The work that we’re putting in this year should lead us to carry out that vision.
Our Team: Lastly, I love the individuals I get to work with every day. Our team embraces the grit and hustle of my home city (Philly), is battle-tested through adversity, and has proven the ability to build and scale what we aim to be one of the great marketplace businesses of this decade.
At the end of the day, I’m grateful to build a fun business with great people. Our goal is to own the weekend plans for groups that want to have fun on their trips, and the new funding helps us fuel that vision.
Let’s build.
Mike
(Shared for blog purposes by Blake)
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