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LEHI — Eric Rea always had high ambitions for Podium — but maybe not this high.
On Tuesday, the Lehi-based startup announced a $125 million funding round led by YC Continuity. According to Rea, Podium’s CEO and co-founder, it was the largest single investment the Bay area-based investment fund had ever given. The announced funding puts Podium’s total funding to around $217 million to date.
"Well, we had pretty big ambitions from day one," Rea told KSL.com. "But to say that (co-founder) Dennis (Steele) and I expected the growth of the business to happen this quickly would be a lie. We knew that the market was big; but when we set out to build Podium, we just were trying to solve problems for my dad's business."
The problem? Getting timely and honest online customer reviews.
Podium began in 2014 as a tool to help fix that issue. It has since grown into a platform that includes customer messaging, mobile payments, webchat, online reviews and customer feedback using messaging channels. The business now has 45,000 clients across the United States, Canada and Australia.
"It's significant for us because it will allow us to continue to help businesses everywhere where we serve them," Rea said. "It will allow us to continue to become the platform that local businesses use to run their business."
And in the current economic climate, with most businesses forced to do things from home, a messaging platform has become even more crucial for companies looking to stay connected to their consumers.
"The company is modernizing the way we all reach out, interact, schedule, pay, and give feedback to our local businesses," YC Continuity CEO Ali Rowghani said in a prepared statement.
Rea said that ever since the COVID-19 outbreak truly took hold in North America, more and more people are turning to Podium to help do business.
"We've actually seen the usage of our products increase over the last three weeks," Rea said, "and so we feel like Podium is well-positioned to help our customers get through this."
In that spirit, the company has also released a free version of its product called Podium Starter.
"If you think about most businesses, they can't even go into their businesses right now — their physical places themselves, either; their landline phone, which is primarily the way they communicate with their customers, is not an option for them right now," Rea said. "So our product is very, very important to these businesses right now."
Rea thinks that the current situation with COVID-19 could end up changing how businesses interact with consumers permanently, too.
"As a consumer, you would way rather text a business than have to call them to get put on hold, play phone tag and leave a voicemail," Rea said. "And so we've seen that consumers have wanted to do this for years, right? And businesses, for whatever reason, are hesitant to change. We've felt like we've done a good job over the past five years of pulling them forward into this way of thinking, but the coronavirus has made it absolutely necessary for them to change the way they communicate with their customers, which is a big positive, actually, for consumers."
