Thumbraise Helps Startups Secure Over $50 Million in Funding Through Virtual Events
Founders pitching via Thumbraise secured over $50 Million in funding at the virtual UNMET Arizona 2020 Pitch Conference. Thumbraise is a St. Louis based startup that could be summarized as the "Tinder for Venture Capital" (EQ's words) offers a pitching platform to help founders raise money remotely via mobile phone. Their suite of features enabled Stout Street Capital’s UNMET conference to hold its flagship event virtually.
Over 150 founders and 200 institutional investors virtually attended the UNMET Arizona 2020 pitch conference on Thumbraise, a new event platform gaining momentum for its ability to drive connections in the venture capital space.
Stout Street Capital, the Denver-based firm that created UNMET, looked to Thumbraise to transition their event from in-person to online. Over the course of the twenty-day conference, Thumbraise facilitated over $50 million in investments for UNMET Arizona’s tech founders across middle America. These founders primarily secured Seed or Series A/B funding.
Thumbraise offered UNMET’s investor network a chance to experience startup pitches in a new way. Founders were able to record short videos of themselves pitching by answering a series of questions posed by event organizers. The short video pitches allowed investors to browse opportunities at their own pace and even filter by stage, target investment size, and more. Investors who were interested in learning more about a pitch connected directly with the founder who made it.
Thumbraise measures all engagement on the platform so they can identify hotspots of attention, provide insight into how investors are engaging, and the eventual connections being made. Both UNMET’s organizers and founders found these analytics to be very insightful:
“Thumbraise is a proven, simple, and effective platform for showcasing startups to investors looking to invest in early stage companies. The platform’s ease of use and ability to track network interactions are key to the success of networking events like UNMET. We are one of the few conferences that have expanded through COVID and Thumbraise has played a major role in that expansion.” said John Francis, Co-founder of UNMET conferences.
“It’s very time efficient.” said Gabriel Wyner, founder of Fluent Forever. “Rather than setting up dozens of meetings, founders record their pitch once, investors peruse pitches at their leisure, and it allows everyone to focus their time on meetings that really matter. We ultimately picked up three key investors through UNMET.”
Thumbraise has been busy as events shift towards online experiences. Along with hosting UNMET Arizona 2020, they also recently hosted Venture Dallas, The Arcview Group, Arch Grants, Connecticut Innovations, and Arizona State University’s Innovation Open.