Main Street Hub announced today that it has closed on $14 million in venture capital led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
The Austin-based company manages social media communications for small to medium-sized businesses in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland and Hong Kong.
Main Street Hub plans to use the funding to further develop its products and to hire sales staff in Austin, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.
Existing investors also participated in the round. The company previously raised $6 million.
“Keeping up with shifts in social media and other ways to connect with customers online is a full time job, but it’s not something most local businesses are staffed to manage. Main Street Hub makes the process painless and rewarding with a full service ‘do-it-for-you’ SaaS marketing platform that helps local businesses through the entire marketing funnel with a combination of people, data and innovative technology,” Co-founder and Co-CEO Andrew Allison said in a news release.
Silicon Hills News did this profile on the company last summer.
Main Street Hub charges businesses a fee to manage their social media presence online including postings on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Google+, Foursquare and TripAdvisor. The company designs a customer relations management platform that allows businesses to easily communicate with customers and to market to them.
The company, founded in 2010, has close to 3,000 customers and 175 employees in four offices.
“At BVP, we’re sensing a shift in power as technology levels the playing field for smaller companies and gives them access to solutions and platforms that were previously only afforded by large box stores and behemoths. Main Street Hub will be a key player in this: They make it possible for local businesses to leverage every channel and engage directly with their customers with a tailored approach that doesn’t require any change of behavior for the merchant or their customers,” Rob Stavis, partner at BVP said in a news release. “In backing Main Street Hub we are not only investing in this growing trend, but also investing in a great company and team that can execute.”
Tag: main street hub
Stacy Zoern, CEO of Community Cars, Inc., runs a car manufacturing business out of Pflugerville.
But that’s not the most remarkable part. Zoern, who uses a wheelchair to get around, wanted to find a car that would provide independence to wheelchair users.
Online, she found the Kenguru, an electric smart car. Only problem was the company ran out of money and shut down operations. So she raised $1.4 million and partnered with the company and they moved the defunct car operations from Hungary to Texas and began manufacturing the bright yellow smart cars in 2010.
That innovative and entrepreneurial spirit earned Zoern’s Community Cars Inc. a spot on the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s A-List, which recognized this week 28 innovative technology startups.
Zoern’s is the only car company to make the list.
The list is meant to shine a spotlight on some of the region’s most innovative technology startups that are seeking funding. To compile the list, the chamber’s tech partnership sought input from investors.
“Austin is rich with innovative startups that are primed for growth and simply need exposure and, most importantly, capital, to transform potential into reality,” Susan Davenport, senior vice president of Global Technology Strategies for the Austin Chamber, said in a news release.
Silicon Hills News has done profiles of several companies on the list including InfoChimps, BlackLocus, Calxeda, MapMyFitness, MassRelevance and Gazzang.
This slideshare contains screen grabs of the homepages of the 28 companies that made the Austin Chamber’s list for 2012.
The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce has culled through its list of Austin startups and tapped into its Technology Partnership to come up with an A-List of startups for 2012.