Smart collaboration platform founded by Romanians launches funding round on SeedBlink
Sessions Technologies, a company that has developed a smart communication platform that brings together all collaboration tools in one place, is targeting EUR 500,000 in funding on SeedBlink, the European funding and equity management platform for technology start-ups.
The funding campaign on SeedBlink is part of a EUR 3 million expansion round.
The company has already raised EUR 1.5 million, with the Early Bird fund as the lead investor. This brings Early Bird's funding in Sessions Technologies to approximately EUR 2.3 million.
The amount will be used for product development, increasing the user base from 40,000 to 100,000 and covering operational expenses.
So far, Sessions has received EUR 9 million in investment: EUR 4.5 million from its founder, Radu Negulescu, and EUR 4.5 million through a round raised in February 2022 from EarlyBird, LAUNCHub, and Stride funds. Thus, the current funding is an extension of the 2022 financing.
Sessions includes Artificial Intelligence functions that allow streamlining processes such as summarizing a meeting, extracting main ideas, and creating lists of the discussed tasks.
The idea to launch Sessions emerged during the pandemic when Radu Negulescu, the company's CEO, founder, and main shareholder, had to organize a meeting of the board of Trencadis, a company he founded when he was 19 years old.
"Because of the complexity of the meeting, I used several tools, including Zoom, Google Drive and Miro. I had to simultaneously record, take notes, create to-do lists, and then do the follow-up. Using all these tools at the same time created a fragmented, inefficient, and costly experience. That's when I realized that the way I worked was going to change forever. So, in 2020, I founded Sessions, a platform that is majorly differentiated by unifying all of these tools that are themselves billion-dollar markets," Radu Negulescu, CEO and founder of Sessions Technologies, explains.
"By using Sessions, companies can reduce their costs by up to 50% and increase productivity by up to four times. Basically, we are to videoconferencing what the smartphone was for the phone industry. Sessions is the first smart videoconferencing platform."
The first version of Sessions was launched in February 2021. It has over 35,000 users globally and has generated sales of EUR 2 million in the last six months. More than 2,500 members worldwide in the Sessions community also contribute to the product's development.
Between November and December 2023, the company added 6,300 users, up 148% from October. Over the same period, 23,000 meetings were run through the platform with over 98,000 participants.
This year, Sessions ran a campaign on AppSumo, a marketplace for digital product offerings and SaaS tools, which generated EUR 1 million in sales in about two months. The campaign was among the five most successful campaigns ever launched on AppSumo (a business established in 2010) alongside products such as Shopify, Zapier, and Intercom.
The management wants the company to attract a Series A round next year and list on the New York Stock Exchange in five to seven years.
"The new round of funding, but also these steps like listing on Product Hunt or AppSumo are important steps we are taking to achieve our major goal: to make the way people work more efficient. The trend of online meetings will remain, and the data clearly shows this. Thus, the global market for video conferencing services is estimated to reach USD 17 billion in 2030 compared to USD 7.8 billion this year, an annual growth of 11.9%, according to Fortune Business Insights. At the same time, the collaboration software market is expected to grow to USD 52.9 billion in 2032 from USD 16.1 billion now, according to Global Market Insights. In this context, our continued goal is to grow our user base, strengthen our market position, and expand product features. In 2024, we want to attract Series A financing, and in the long term, our goal is to list on the New York Stock Exchange," Negulescu added.
The company has 26 full-time employees. The company's management team comprises Radu Negulescu - Founder and CEO; Ionut Anisia - Chief Operating Officer; Razvan Duican - Head of Product; Victor Sava - Head of Delivery; and Savian Boroanca - Head of Community.
"[...] The SeedBlink campaign is a unique opportunity for private investors and angel investors to join the narrative that the Sessions team is creating, thus contributing to their development at an early stage. This is the first time we are co-investing in a round led by Earlybird, the VC who has believed in UiPath from the beginning", Andrei Dudoiu, managing partner of SeedBlink, said.
(Photo from company)
simona@romania-insider.com