Socio planning hiring spree after $6M funding round

An Indianapolis-based software firm that helps clients across the globe pull off events announced Tuesday it has raised $6 million in venture capital.

Socio Labs Inc. has now raised a total of $6.7 million in venture and growth capital since its founding in 2016.

Indianapolis-based High Alpha Capital led the most recent Series A round, with participation from Maryland-based Greenspring Associates. High Alpha partner Mike Fitzgerald will join Socio’s board of directors.

The funding is expected to help Socio rapidly grow its teams at the company’s North American headquarters in downtown Indianapolis and its office in Istanbul, Turkey, according to company officials. The cash infusion should help accelerate the firm’s development of new products to help customers put on conferences, trade shows and internal and external meetings.

Socio has 35 employees, and company officials told IBJ the firm plans to triple employment by the end of 2020.

Along with announcing the capital raise, Socio also has rolled out two new products, Socio Lead Retrieval and Socio Live Display, to its event management platform. Like the Socio Event App, both products focus primarily on the in-event experience.

Socio is in the process of developing several more enterprise-ready products. Next up is the company’s first pre-event product, which will focus on event registration, company officials said.

“The average B2B company spends around 22 percent of its marketing budget on events,” Socio co-founder and CEO Yarkin Sakucoglu said in written remarks. “When done right, events are the most powerful source of lead generation, brand exposure, and marketing ROI. Knowing how hard it is to execute events right, we want to give organizers a full-stack solution that simplifies their work and maximizes ROI across the entire event lifecycle.”

Socio’s customers include names such as Google, Harvard, and Pinterest along with other major enterprises, associations, and universities. Its client base has grown to more than 400 customers in nearly 50 countries.

“Socio is winning business from sophisticated event marketers with tools that are both simple and powerful, which is not an easy combination in B2B software,” High Alpha’s Fitzgerald said in a statement. “We’ve been incredibly impressed with this team and look forward to partnering with them as they continue building the premier event management platform for marketers.”