Announcing our investment in RetreatsandVenues.com (“R&V”), the world’s largest digital platform connecting corporates with over 4,200 retreat venues around the globe.
RetreatsandVenues.com (“R&V”) is the category leader for companies such as Vistaprint, Miro, Epic Games, and Close to find and book venues for their corporate retreats and offsites. Think Airbnb, but for the $28B retreats and offsites market.
Today, we are excited to announce our investment in RetreatsandVenues.com, leading their seed round of financing alongside LOI Ventures and numerous Canadian angels.
Our GP Jeffrey has known founders Mike, Cory, and Matt for years and watched their past successes building and selling previous venture-backed startups.
R&V was front and center on our radar for potential investment after they won the prestigious New Ventures BC competition in fall 2023, beating out 200 other BC ventures for the top prize.
Since launching in January 2022, the R&V platform has curated over 4,200 of the world’s top retreat venues, generating over $6M in venue bookings (GMV), all bootstrapped with only $200k in founders’ cash to date. This seed round represents the first true outside round of financing the company has completed.
Having previously run retreats with their past companies, the R&V founders recognized the inherent value in bringing teams together. However, the traditional process of booking venues was typically managed by Executive Assistants. Upon organizing their own entrepreneurial retreat, Cory, Matt, and Mike personally navigated the venue booking process and identified significant inefficiencies. R&V exemplifies the classic VC mantra “Founder/Market/Problem” fit, one of the main reasons we decided to partner with the company in this seed round.
Retreats & Venues is solving a problem for both retreat leaders (corporates) and venues (retreat destinations). The existing marketplace is highly fragmented on both supply and demand sides. In a market with high friction, nailing the small details makes a material difference in product stickiness, and the early traction R&V has experienced has proved customers really appreciate a digitally native approach to solving this problem.
As more companies look to make offsites and retreats a core component of their culture-building strategy, we expect demand for the R&V platform to grow substantially. R&V is well-positioned to serve many of these companies, being the go-to platform companies use to create a vibrant corporate culture and maintain their competitive edge.
We are thrilled to partner with R&V as they tackle such a pressing problem! If you’re a company or retreat venue wanting to learn more about R&V, please visit their website: https://retreatsandvenues.com/
