Voicify Closes $2 Million Funding Round, Brings Total Invested to $2.75 Million
Voicify announced this morning that it has closed a $2 million funding round. The new cash infusion brings total funding to date t $2.75 million. MarTech ventures led the previous funding round and the company confirmed that the firm also participated in the latest financing. Voicify was introduced in 2018 and offers a code-free voice experience development platform for enterprises. The company says it has signed up more than 30 agency partners which it collaborates with on work directly with enterprise customers.
Code-Free Voice App Development an Active Investor Category
The code-free voice development space has been in the news a lot recently. PullString was acquired by Apple at the end of 2018. Invocable, which at one time hosted thousands of Alexa skills, shut down last month just nine months after raising a seed funding round. And, Voiceflow announced its own $3.5 million funding round just two weeks ago. That funding was led by True Ventures, which also was a prominent investor in PullString.
Voicify CEO Jeff McMahon
Voicify positions itself is as different. First, it is focused on the enterprise space, unlike Voiceflow which targets the “long-tail” of voice app developers according to CEO Braden Reem. And, Voicify is still independent and working with enterprises whereas PullString shed all of its customers after the acquisition. In addition, the company focuses on supporting a wide range of conversational experiences in both voice and chat. Voicebot caught up with Voicify CEO Jeff McMahon, to learn more about the funding and where the company is headed.
Why is now a good time for Voicify to raise funds?
Jeff McMahon: When we first got started we knew it was a rapidly growing space. We are finally at a point where the enterprise market is starting to put their money where their mouths are. They are making that investment in 2019 or budgeting for 2020. That means it’s time to put in connectors to other marketing stack tools. Finally, big corporations and enterprises catching up with market penetration of the devices.
What are some of the marketing stack tools you plan to integrate with?
McMahon: Connections into systems of record such as content management systems, product information management systems, CRM — places where content already resides and it can help voice experiences to integrate with them. This is one area that we want to make sure we do correctly out of the gate. You need to put an engaging experience together. We are trying to help our clients by offering a platform that helps them create a dynamic environment. How can we develop something where people want to use it daily and monthly and not just annually? We are trying to help them build the most engaging apps possible.
Users will want to come back and check their content such as bank balances or account information. Mobile ran into that problem. They put up a version of a website and it didn’t have any utility. The more thoughtful enterprises are trying to figure out how they go beyond that [with voice].
Why do enterprises use Voicify?
McMahon: For two reasons. One, we solve the cross-platform issues. We have a build once, publish anyway mentality. We support Amazon, Google, and Cortana today and will support Bixby later this year. Two, if you have these unique siloed experiences, it makes it very difficult to manage them over time. Once deployed, for example, you want an enterprise voice content management system attached to it. You can manage these conversations in a more dynamic way. You can provide dynamic content, variation when users return.
Thus far, we have a rich feature set. To the extent that [the enterprise] has an existing skill, you can run our platform in parallel to the existing skills. If you want to build a custom feature you can and tap it into the platform. We are not doing any professional services. All customization is being done by our clients or agency partners. We are a pure-play SaaS.
How will you use the new funding?
McMahon: Product extension and scaling up sales and marketing. We are fortunate to have a lot of inbound activity and several dozen agency partners already.
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Voiceflow Completes $3.5M Seed Funding Round Led by True Ventures
