JRNI Closes $6 Million Series C Extension, Bringing Total Series C Funding to $19.4 Million
Financing Will Further Extend Company’s European Market Leadership and Supercharge U.S. Growth with Newly Appointed CTO
BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–JRNI, formerly BookingBug, the leading customer engagement platform for omnichannel conversion, today announced that it has closed a $6 million extension to its Series C financing led by PeakSpan Capital with participation from Downing Ventures and Somerston Group. The round brings JRNI’s total funding to $23.2 million, and builds on JRNI’s $13.4 million Series C financing from April 2018. The financing allows the company to further extend its global market leadership and further accelerate its explosive U.S. growth.
Companies strive to leverage every customer interaction for maximum conversion and revenue. JRNI offers a customer engagement platform – via its industry-leading Appointments, Events, Queuing, Call Center, and Insights applications – that enables companies to interact with customers, online to offline, delivering a single brand experience that delights consumers on their journey and drives significantly better conversion metrics.
The new capital will be used to advance the company’s rapid growth as it expands its market leadership in Europe and deepens its sales, marketing, development, and customer success initiatives in the U.S. In May, JRNI opened an office in Manchester, N.H., that headquarters its U.S. development operations.
“JRNI’s momentum in the U.S. has been energizing,” said John Federman, JRNI’s CEO. “As enterprises bridge the digital-to-physical divide in retail and financial services, JRNI is uniquely positioned as an extensible SaaS platform driving business in-store and in-branch through to conversion. The additional financing will enable us to quickly and successfully deliver for our customers.”
JRNI’s financing extension follows the company’s rebrand from BookingBug to JRNI to reinforce its focus on providing engagement throughout the customer journey.
“JRNI’s incredible business growth, both globally and specifically within the U.S., is a testament to the company’s innovative platform that is solving a critical business problem: increasing conversions,” said Brian Mulvey, PeakSpan Capital’s partner and co-founder. “JRNI’s powerful platform allows customers to put omnichannel conversion at the heart of their business. We’re looking forward to continuing to work closely with the entire JRNI team in our next phase of growth.”
As a testament to the company’s impressive growth, JRNI has appointed Simon Copsey as its first chief technology officer. An accomplished technology executive, he will oversee JRNI’s technology and product strategy and will lead the development, engineering, and product teams. He will be based out of the company’s London headquarters.
Copsey brings more than 30 years of software, engineering, and product experience to JRNI, including cloud computing and mobile skills. Over the course of his career, he has transformed software startups into viable, customer-focused businesses, launched the BBC’s iPlayer, developed the architecture of Sky’s interactive TV platform, and delivered multi-platform mobile apps for CNN and the NBA in the U.S.
Prior to JRNI, he served in various vice president of engineering roles for innovative U.K. companies, such as Flyt, Rakuten Marketing, and Import.io. He also served as chief technology officer for Cardola, and held various program and project management roles at Red Bee Media and BBC News.
“JRNI has built a remarkable reputation globally for its powerful, scalable, and extensible platform that helps retail and financial services companies quickly increase their conversions and create exceptional customer experiences,” said Copsey. “I’m extremely honored to join the talented team at JRNI, so we can further progress our product and drive even more strategic value to our customers. I’m looking forward to helping all of our customers achieve their omnichannel goals via JRNI.”
“Simon’s leadership is a critical component for us to continue rapidly delivering for our customers worldwide,” said Federman. “His deep technical expertise, combined with his track record of success, positions us exceedingly well for future innovation. I’m excited to welcome him to the team, and I’m eager to see his contributions in his new role.”
About JRNI
JRNI is designed to facilitate powerful human-to-human experiences that increase conversion and revenue, customer loyalty, and lifetime value. Forward-thinking executives from companies like U.S. Bank, ANZ, John Lewis & Partners, and LEGO rely on JRNI’s AI-driven scheduling engine to deliver predictive actions across touchpoints – appointments, events, concierge, queuing – and optimize resources to deliver superior quality of experience. To learn more, visit www.jrni.com.
About PeakSpan Capital
PeakSpan Capital is a growth equity firm based in New York City and Silicon Valley, with a focused mission to be the partner of choice for growth stage entrepreneurial teams who are building amazing software targeted at business buyers of all sizes – from very small businesses to large enterprises. PeakSpan combines deep domain expertise within a select number of themes with a homegrown, proprietary technology platform providing visibility into company and market performance, to help entrepreneurs drive resilient, risk-adjusted value creation. To learn more about PeakSpan Capital and its portfolio, please visit peakspancapital.com.
About Downing Ventures
Downing Ventures is a London based evergreen fund investing in seed to series A (and beyond) companies, providing entrepreneurs with a ladder of funding. We have backed over 60 businesses (as at 17.01.2019) across a variety of technology sectors including online marketplaces, and enterprise software, and health technology.
About Somerston Group
Somerston Ventures is part of an international investment engaged primarily in real estate development as well as technology and venture capital investment. The Group is privately owned and headquartered in Jersey, Channel Islands. Its origins date back to shipping interests established in the 1850s by the Group’s founding family.
Contacts
Steve Vittorioso
Director of Public Relations
JRNI, formerly BookingBug
pr@jrni.com
1-978-875-1297 (cell)
