It’s been an active seven days for Cvent, one of the largest event management companies in the world you’ve never heard of. The company, which offers web-based software for online event registration, management and more, has been on a mission to go beyond B2B services. Since raising $136 million last year, Cvent has re-focused on more consumer-facing event solutions, especially on mobile. As part of this new direction, Cvent made its first-ever acquisition last week, scooping up Austin-based event app developer Seed Labs for $4.2 million.
Given its new consumer aspirations, venture backing and strong recent growth, we said last week that “it wouldn’t be surprising to see Cvent continue making strategic acquisitions” in the near future. Although we are soothsayers, we didn’t expect it to be so soon. Today, the event software company announced its second acquisition in seven days, picking up Portland-based app developer CrowdCompass for $10 million.
CrowdCompass, which has raised about $1.3 million in funding, is like Seed Labs for conferences. The app developer offers a suite of mobile apps that aim to accelerate the popularity of events, conferences and tradeshows by making that experience simple, social, and easy to share on the go.
Specifically, this means that event and conference organizers can create custom-branded mobile apps that combine schedules, maps, exhibitor listings, sponsorship opportunities, QR code scanning, messaging and social networking into one solution. Cvent already offers clients the ability to create mobile-optimized web sites, but the acquisition will allow the company to offer a native experience to let organizers quickly create iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry apps for their business events.
Founded in 2009 by Dave Shanley, Brian Felder and Tom Kingsley, CrowdCompass has already built 435 apps, which were downloaded more than 500K times by event attendees in the last year. The company has built custom apps for corporations like E*Trade, Daimler and Intuit, as well as industry organizations and associations like the American Bar Association and the Association of General Contractors. In turn, access to Cvent’s roster of 10,000 clients in 90+ countries will allow the compass to operate on a greater scale than it would have otherwise.
For more, find CrowdCompass at home here.
Founded in 1999, Cvent is the world’s largest meetings and event management technology company and has more than 1,100 employees worldwide. Cvent offers web-based software for online event registration, meeting site selection, event management, mobile apps for events, e-mail marketing, and web surveys. Cvent helps over 150,000 users in 90 countries manage hundreds of thousands of events, surveys and e-mail campaigns. Cvent has processed over $2.5 billion in online payments and has managed over 30 million event registrations and...
CrowdCompass creates event, meeting conference and tradeshow mobile applications for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android devices. By combining schedules, maps, exhibitor listings, sponsorship opportunities, QR code scanning, messaging and social networking into custom-branded apps, CrowdCompass enables event organizers to produce better connected, less wasteful and more successful events.
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