Why we invested in AhoyConnect
Unlocking the true potential of online communities.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a brand or product that doesn’t have its own dedicated online community where members discuss, debate and, yes, argue about everything related to it.
While the purpose of these communities is usually to serve as a forum to ask questions and offer help, guide new users and act as a reference library, they have also been the subject of much speculation about how to leverage the engagement they generate into business results.
There is enormous value in being aware of what community members are talking about (and who is doing the talking). Think about the problems they discuss, the suggestions they make, the feedback they offer and more. This is the kind of business intelligence that can help organizations stay ahead of the market curve, guide their product development, alert them to potential problems and add to their bottom line in any number of ways.
Like many others in tech, we’re convinced that community-led growth is the next big thing and that’s why we’re so excited about our partnership with a startup that has found a way to unlock this potential — AhoyConnect.
Turning community contributions into business insights
Launched in March of 2021, AhoyConnect has already taken the inside track to becoming the leading community data intelligence platform. Their goal is to enable organizations to understand, grow, engage, automate, give and derive value from their online audiences.
Founder Tomas Jasovsky recognized that even though it’s already one of the strongest organic growth channels, virtual communities are still heavily underutilized. Despite the widespread use of tools like Slack, InSided, Discord, GitHub, Twitter and others to interact with their members, too many organizations lack a good understanding of the value that they’re missing out on. This is primarily because these platforms don’t have the necessary analytics and are not meant for managing communities, meaning companies are not benefitting from the data they can’t see. Very rarely does the community live in one place, so data silos between all the platforms and channels are an even bigger problem.
This knowledge deficit, combined with the lack of available tools, created the perfect opportunity for Tomas and AhoyConnect.
Now organizations can easily integrate the tools they already use and start gathering, consolidating and visualizing community member-generated data from multiple platforms. Once unified, data is presented in a simple dashboard that makes it easy to understand where the opportunities are.
From there, it’s a short step to increasing engagement, enhancing customer loyalty, monetizing interest and more.
AhoyConnect consolidates the signals received from various platforms and presents them as actionable insights to the relevant part of an organization. Sales leads, powerful testimonials, potential brand ambassadors — they’re all there somewhere in every digital community and AhoyConnect enables their clients to easily pick them out and turn them into business results.
And it‘s not just the Sales and Marketing teams that benefit. With AhoyConnect, Community Managers have a powerful tool that enriches the customer experience and builds on this critical customer touchpoint.
There is not yet one market-dominant platform for managing communities. Other brands in the space are also emerging but we are confident that AhoyConnect’s data-first approach and ability to grow beyond a tool for community managers into a key platform for member data intelligence will provide the edge it needs to become the go-to solution for turning community activity into the most powerful growth channel.
The right team to make it happen
Being on-trend with an amazing idea and having the best solution to a widespread problem is a great start, but you still need the right people to put the pieces together. Our decision to invest in AhoyConnect was made easier by the impressive team they’ve assembled.
In addition to Tomas, Chief Data Officer Adam Staniszewski, CTO Michal Macejko, Head of Talent Becky Lee Roche, and Head of Operations Kacper Zambrzycki complete the management team. We’re confident that their diverse experience across multiple tech fields and proven track record of success will guide AhoyConnect to amazing heights.
Having just raised a $3m seed round with Inovo Venture Partners and KAYA, AhoyConnect is ready to take the next step in breaking new ground in the community-led growth market, which is estimated to be worth as much as $12 billion in the next few years. As the software market continues to expand, so does the market for leveraging the value of all the online communities to come.
Remember the name — you will definitely be hearing about AhoyConnect in lots of conversations about winners in the community-led-growth space.
Inovo Venture Partners is a first-choice VC for ambitious founders from Poland and the CEE region. We back early-stage, post-traction startups with up to €3M of initial investment, and help them build global brands while driving growth of the local startup ecosystem. We take great pride in being close to top founders who think big. We’re investors in: Booksy, Restaumatic, Sotrender, Infermedica, Spacelift, Tidio, AI Clearing, Zowie, Jutro Medical, Intiaro, Packhelp, Preply, Eyerim, Allset, SunRoof, Archbee and AhoyConnect. Our second fund reached a total of €54M.
For more information visit: inovo.vc
