Carats & Cake, the financial operating system for the events industry, today announced its $10.6 million Series A fundraising. Led by 1Sharpe Ventures, with additional participation from Founders Fund, Acrew Capital, Moore Specialty Credit, Correlation Ventures, GMO VenturePartners, Argosy Capital, and SilverCircle this latest capital enables Carats & Cake to expand across product, engineering, and sales as it brings to market the end-to-end revenue optimization software needed by venues and property management firms. Today’s announcement brings the company’s total equity raised to $19.9 million with an additional debt facility of $10 million. Gregor Watson, co-founder of 1Sharpe Ventures will also be joining Carats & Cake’s board of directors.
“After working with properties for years, we began selling our new software in January of 2022 and the response to date has been extraordinary with over 300 properties choosing our solutions including our first enterprise partner, Loews Hotels. The platform’s value is undeniable – provide a better, more consistent customer experience, offer flexible, digital payment features like pay-over-time, and improve revenue, cashflow, and time to conversion,” said Jess Conroy, Founder and CEO, Carats & Cake. “With this latest financing, we plan to thoughtfully build out our product, engineering, and sales teams as we continue to support properties with purpose-built tools. We seek to be the partner of choice for the digital transformation of the events industry and we have the investor support to make that a reality.”
Founded in 2013, Carats & Cake has long been the go-to source for marketing and discovery for event businesses. Today, that trust has evolved to touch every facet of venue and property groups’ event sales operations including contracting, invoicing, and financing. The company’s solutions connect the customer journey from venue discovery to actually paying for an event. Carats & Cake serves as a necessary solution for venues that complements CRM and POS solutions already in use on the hotel booking side of the business, which are commonly run entirely separately.
“When we first invested in Carats & Cake in 2021, we were impressed by Jess’ knowledge of the events industry and fully thought through software and data stack that would best serve her customer base as they grow this vital line of business. The projections we invested on in the seed were quickly blown out of the water and it was a no-brainer to lead the Series A,” said Gregor Watson, Co-Founder, 1Sharpe Ventures. “The pandemic created a wedding boom in an already fast-growing, $100 billion per year industry. By embedding even more deeply with the leading venues and property groups, Carats & Cake is poised to help them provide the experience customers demand and optimize their revenue each step of the way. It’s exciting to be a part of this industry’s transformation and help steward Carats & Cake’s future on the board as well.”
About Carats & Cake
Carats & Cake delivers the revenue optimization platform for venues and property groups, transforming the $100 billion annual events industry through a full suite of purpose-built marketing, sales, and customer conversion (contracting, invoicing, and payments) solutions. Built by industry leaders, Carats & Cake has cultivated nearly a decade of trust with best-in-class businesses. Founded in 2013 and backed by 1Sharpe Ventures, Founders Fund, Acrew Capital, Moore Specialty Credit, Correlation Ventures, SilverCircle, GMO VenturePartners, and others, Carats & Cake enables forward-thinking event venues, hospitality groups, and property asset owners to provide a modern customer experience while optimizing sales operations and increasing revenue.
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