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Goodcall picks up $4M, Yelp partnership to answer merchant inbound calls
Even without staffing shortages, local merchants have difficulty answering calls while all hands are busy, and Goodcall wants to alleviate some of that burden from America’s 30 million small businesses.
Goodcall’s free cloud-based conversational platform leverages artificial intelligence to manage incoming phone calls and boost customer service for businesses of all sizes. Former Google executive Bob Summers left Google back in January, where he was working on Area 120 — an internal incubator program for experimental projects — to start Goodcall after recognizing the call problem, noting that in fact 60% of the calls that come into merchants go unanswered.
“It’s frustrating for you and for the person calling,” Summers told TechCrunch. “Every missed call is a lost opportunity.”
Goodcall announced its launch Wednesday with $4 million in seed funding led by strategic investors Neo, Foothill Ventures, Merus Capital, Xoogler Ventures, Verissimo Ventures and VSC Ventures, as well as angel investors including Harry Hurst, founder and co-CEO of Pipe.com, and Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff.
Goodcall mobile agent. Image Credits: Goodcall
Restaurants, shops and merchants can set up on Goodcall in a matter of minutes and even establish a local phone number to free up an owner’s mobile number from becoming the business’ main line. The service is initially deployed in English and the company has plans to operate in Spanish, French and Hindi by 2022.
Merchants can choose from six different assistant voices and monitor the call logs and what the calls were about. Goodcall can also capture consumer sentiment, Summers said.
The company offers three options, including its freemium service for solopreneurs and business owners, which includes up to 500 minutes per month of Goodcall services for a single phone line. Up to five additional locations and five staff members costs $19 per month for the Pro level, or the Premium level provides unlimited locations and staff for $49 per month.
During the company’s beta period, Goodcall was processing several thousands of calls per month. The new funding will be used to continue to offer the free service, hire engineers and continue product development.
In addition to the funding round, Goodcall is unveiling a partnership with Yelp to tap into its database of local businesses so that those owners and managers can easily deploy Goodcall. Yelp data shows that more than 500,000 businesses opened during the pandemic. The company pulls in from Yelp a merchant’s open hours, location, if they offer Wi-Fi and even their COVID policy.
“We are partnering with Yelp, which has the best data on small businesses, and other large distribution channels to get our product to market,” Summers said. “We are bringing technology into an industry that hasn’t innovated since the 1980s and democratizing conversational AI for small businesses that are the main driver of job creation, and we want to help them grow.”
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Moesif secures $12M to provide user behavior insights on API usage
As more companies provide more API-first services, Moesif has developed a way for those companies to learn how their customers are utilizing them.
The San Francisco-based startup is adding to its capital raise Monday with the announcement of a $12 million Series A round led by David Sacks and Arra Malekzadeh of Craft Ventures. Existing investor Merus Capital, which led Moesif’s $3.5 million seed round in 2019, also participated in the round, bringing the company’s total raise to $15.5 million, Moesif co-founder and CEO Derric Gilling told TechCrunch.
Gilling and Xing Wang founded Moesif in 2017 and went through the Alchemist Accelerator in 2018.
Companies seeking data around API usage and workflow traditionally had to build that capability in-house on top of a tech like Snowflake, Gilling said. One of the problems with that was if someone wanted a report, the process was ad hoc, meaning they would file a ticket and wait until a team had time to run the report. In addition, companies find it difficult to accurately bill customers on usage or manage when someone exceeds the rate limits.
“We started to see people build on top of our platform and pull data on APIs, and they started asking us how to directly serve customers, like making them aware if they are hitting a rate limit,” Gilling added. “We started to build new functionality and a way to customize the look and feel of the platform.”
Moesif provides self-service analytics that can be accessed daily and features to scale analytics in a more cost-effective manner. Customers use it to monitor features to better understand when there are issues with the API, and there are additional capabilities to understand who is using the API, how often and who may be likely to stop using a product based on how they are using it.
The company is also now seeing its revenue grow over 20% month over month this year and adoption by more diverse use cases and larger companies. At the time of the seed round, the company was just getting started with analytics and user trials, Gilling said. Today, it boasts a customer list that includes UPS, Tomorrow.io, Symbl.ai and Deloitte.
The company has also gone from a team of two to nine employees, and Gilling expects to use the new funding to bolster that roster across engineering, sales, developer relations and customer success.
He is also focusing on being a thought leader in the space and is pushing go-to-market and building out a new set of features to monetize APIs and improve its dashboard to better differentiate Moesif from competitors, which he said focus more on server health versus customer usage.
As part of the investment, Craft Ventures’ Malekzadeh is joining Moesif’s board. She was introduced to Gilling by another portfolio company and felt Moesif fit into Crafts’ thesis on SaaS companies.
Malekzadeh’s particular interest is in developer tools, and while in her previous position working at a startup developing APIs, she felt firsthand the pain point of not being able to know how those APIs were being used, how much customers should be billed and “was always bugging the product and engineering teams for reports.”
Moesif didn’t exist at the time she worked at the startup, and instead, her company had to build it own tools that turned out to be clunky, while at the same time recruiting top engineers that didn’t want to take up their time with building something that wasn’t the company’s core product.
“The two founders are highly technical, but they provided great content on their website that helped me learn about them,” Malekzadeh added. “One of the interesting things about them is that even though they are technical, they speak the same language as a business user, which makes them special as a developer-first company. Just the growth in their revenue was super impressive, and their customer references were glowing.”
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Peloton, WeWork, Vox, Bodega, Kapwing and oh boy are we tired
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As with yesterday, Kate and Alex were both on-site at TechCrunch’s San Francisco headquarters to chat over the latest. Unlike yesterday, however, Equity brought along a guest: Sean Dempsey from Merus Capital. (Merus writes seed and Series A checks, with a focus on enterprise companies.)
And thus the three dove into the news. Early-stage first, to shake things up.
Early-stage
Kate wrote a story this week about a startup you might have forgotten about but who’s name probably rings a bell. Bodega! The company now goes by Stockwell, actually, and they’ve raised a whopping total of $45 million in VC funding. But what’s in a name after all? We debate.
Next we turned to an interesting company called Kapwing. What’s that you ask? “It’s a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix media,” says TechCrunch’s Josh Constine. We’re intrigued.
Late-stage and beyond
This week Peloton priced and went public. The firm’s $29 per-share IPO price was top of its proposed range ($26 to $29). The public markets, however, decided that the unicorn had reached too high.
So, shares of the high-end exercise company dropped, wrapping the day down about 11%. A good IPO first day this was not, though the company did manage to raise more capital than it might have with more conservative pricing. (Peloton has a yucky multi-class share structure that we touched on as well; it seems that all the big companies these days are opposed to regular governance.)
Next we turned to the Vox-NYMag merger. It’s a bit out of our territory but it’s a digital media deal, so we were interested. After all, the two of us have spent our entire careers in digital media and we have a vested interest in these companies surviving.
WeWork (Redux)
We honestly tried to get all the WeWork out of our system yesterday. We wanted to include zero WeWork content on this episode. But WeWork keeps doing things, so here we are.
Keeping things as brief as we can, WeWork is going to divest some companies that it bought (more on what we thought it was up to, here) including its jet, and the firm is looking to take on more capital. Unsurprisingly.
All that and we’re done for this week. Chat you all at Disrupt!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
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Final ticket release to the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party
One of Silicon Valley’s most fun and enduring traditions — the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party — takes place on July 25. If you don’t have a ticket yet, know this: We just released the last batch of tickets. Once they’re gone, that’s it. No party for you. Don’t miss out on a night of fun and opportunity — buy your ticket today.
The Park Chalet, San Francisco’s coastal beer garden, provides a picturesque setting (ocean views anyone?) for a casual evening celebrating the early-startup spirit. Hang out and enjoy local craft beer, cocktails, delicious food and great conversation with other fearless tech entrepreneurs.
TechCrunch parties provide a relaxed way to connect and network, and they’re known as a place where startup magic happens. Who knows? You might meet your future co-founder or funder. Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, founders of Box, met one of their first investors at a TechCrunch party.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to chat up an investor since our lead VC partner, Merus Capital, will be in the house, along with August Capital, Battery Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, General Catalyst and Uncork Capital.
No TechCrunch event would be complete without exciting startups showcasing their tech and talent.
Here’s the when, where and how:
- When: July 25 from 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
- Where: Park Chalet in San Francisco
- How much: $95
As always, you have a chance to win great door prizes, including TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.
The 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party takes place on July 25, and this is the last ticket release. Don’t miss out on a convivial evening of food, drink, connection and possibility in the company of your entrepreneurial peers. Buy your ticket right here.
Want a free ticket to Disrupt SF?
Volunteer for the Summer Party and work with the TechCrunch team for a few hours. Sign up to volunteer here.
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Fresh tickets to our 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party
Our 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party is a mere two weeks away, and we’re serving up a fresh new batch of tickets to this popular Silicon Valley tradition. Jump on this opportunity, folks, because our previous releases sold out in a flash — and these babies won’t last long, either. Buy your ticket today.
Our summer soiree takes place on July 25 at Park Chalet, San Francisco’s coastal beer garden. Picture it: A cold brew, an ocean view, tasty food and relaxed conversations with other amazing members of the early-startup tech community.
TechCrunch parties have a reputation as a place where startup magic happens. And there will be plenty of magical opportunity afoot this year as heavy-hitter VCs from Merus Capital, August Capital, Battery Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, General Catalyst and Uncork Capital join the party.
There’s more than one way to make magic at our summer fete. If you’re serious about catching the eye of these major VCs, consider buying a Startup Demo Package, which includes four attendee tickets.
Fun fact: Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ, at a party hosted by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. It’s one of our favorite success stories.
Check out the party details:
- When: July 25 from 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
- Where: Park Chalet in San Francisco
- How much: $95
- Startup Demo Package: $2,000
No TechCrunch party is complete without a chance to win great door prizes, including TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.
Buy your ticket today and enjoy a convivial evening of connection and community in a beautiful setting. Opportunity happens, and it’s waiting for you at the TechCrunch Summer Party.
Pro Tip: If you miss out this time, sign up here and we’ll let you know when we release the next group of tickets.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the TechCrunch 14th Annual Summer Party? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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Symphony Secures $100M From Google And Other Investors
Symphony, the secure cloud-based communications platform, announced today that it has received a $100 million round from a list of investors that includes Google, Inc. Google’s part in the investment was first reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, but the search giant was also joined by Lakestar, Natixis, Societe Generale, UBS and existing investor Merus Capital.… Read More
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