PopBookings Raises $1 Million in Oversubscribed Funding Round

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 6, 2017
Contact: Erika Klotz
PopBookings
(312) 722-6422
hello@popbookings.com

PopBookings Raises $1 Million in Oversubscribed Funding Round
Capital Will Support New Product Development and Further International Expansion

KANSAS CITY, MO – PopBookings, the event staffing software that streamlines talent coordination for promotional models, brand ambassadors, street teams, bartenders, and more, is pleased to announce the recent closure of its latest fundraising round. The company raised $1+ million in an oversubscribed round to support its product development effort and enable further expansion into overseas markets.

“PopBookings is seeing a ton of explosive growth right now,” says co-founder and COO Scott Hanson,” and we’re bringing on agencies and users faster than we know what to do with them. This raise will help us not only keep up with all of this amazing growth but also to continue to build market-leading applications for our users. We’re very excited about what’s ahead.”

The PopBookings app allows event staffing agencies, their clients, and the contractors they work with to communicate on a unified platform, sending job invites, booking confirmations, payments, and messages seamlessly. The company recently expanded its service into the U.K. and Europe and has begun adding new industries that use temporary labor, including construction, to its platform. This fundraising round will support those efforts and allow for additional hiring over the next year.

“When we started this company it was just three of us working out of our parents’ basements,” says co-founder and CEO Erika Klotz, “and it’s grown into something that we could never have imagined. It’s amazing. And the best part for us is that we get to not only work with our great, and growing, team, but we’re also creating a product that helps thousands of other people all over the the world find work and sustain themselves at the same time. It’s such an honor to be able to come to work every day and do that.”

For more information visit www.popbookings.com or contact the company at (312) 722-6422 or hello@popbookings.com.

About PopBookings: Based in Kansas City, MO, PopBookings is a software development company that is dedicated to streamlining the event staffing process with a mobile-first platform that brings agencies, clients, and talent together. The app allows users to share job opportunities, place clients, manage appearances, pay talent, track activities, and more, and is currently available to users in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Learn more and request a demo at www.popbookings.com.

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Consideration

With 2021 well underway and with public markets still strong, we think it is an important time to highlight some of the key private market, venture investment themes that iSelect fund has identified for the year. We believe technologies transforming the Agriculture, Food and Wellness markets will flourish, with a focus on four areas: technologies that enable better food choices to drive better health outcomes, technologies that drive better, more profitable farm operations, technologies that drive the Consumerization of Healthcare, and biome-based treatment technologies. At iSelect, we invest for impact AND performance. We offer qualified investors access to emerging growth companies through our national venture capital strategy. Our unique structure allows our investors to continue to invest in these companies as they develop.

Timing

Why is now the right time for venture? The answer is that now is not explicitly the right time. Venture is something we need in our economy at all times. Now is not better than any other particular time. The question is, why ever stop? When we look at the challenges we’re facing in food and healthcare the reality is there is someone, somewhere who has an insight about how to build a product that will solve those problems. And if they put the right resources to it, they will succeed. As long as we need new technology to make life better or make our lives more enjoyable, we need venture capital to help fuel those entrepreneurs.

What is iSelect as a product?

iSelect is a very unique product, but when you break it into its parts it’s fairly easy to understand. On the front end we’re a traditional venture capital fund. We have a diligence process. We have an investment process. We have categories of industries where we have focus and real expertise, and we invest in companies in those areas that meet requirements for the fund. On the back end we’re unique in that we don’t raise a large amount of capital at one time and deploy it over the life of our fund. Each deal that we bring onto the fund, our investors have to prove and determine to invest in that deal. We have to constantly prove our diligence standards. It’s accessible, transparent and easy for investors to come in and see our comprehensive process.

What is the ideal iSelect company?

We are looking for founders that are passionate and we want the problem they’re trying to solve to be big, real, and painful. We want the solution to be revolutionary and we want our capital to be able to help them solve that problem. We want to know that they have customers involved and that the solution they’ve come up with actually meets those customers’ and market needs. And we want the team to be capital efficient with the money they’re spending.

What does the ideal iSelect company look like?

We’re looking for a company that has an opportunity to have a 10x return to our investment or greater in a period of three to seven years. What excites us at iSelect are companies that are solving big problems. We want companies that are going to be the Monsantos of the future. Not just in the size and the scope, but the impact they have on people’s lives. We want to create positive impacts on people’s lives, so we invest in areas like agricultural production and areas like producing healthy foods for our kids. They are problems that impact real people’s lives on a daily basis. That’s what we’re trying to do at iSelect. We’re trying to solve the big problems out there. Find ways to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are the real heroes out there getting up every morning, beating away at these things that are problems that you and me and everyone else faces in their everyday lives.

What is iSelect?

iSelect is a venture capital firm. What that means is we look at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and we apply tough diligence standards to each of them, looking at whether the team has a good plan for growing the business, whether the team is qualified and credible, and more. We do that to resolve the few who provide the best opportunities for investors. And then iSelect takes that smaller set of investments and goes to investors who are interested in venture capital and provides a way for them to invest in these companies, either individually or all at once. We co-invest alongside other venture capitalists. We source transactions through to an exit where the company would become public or get bought. And we manage that whole investment process on behalf of our investors.