AmazingCo, a data-driven experiences platform, recently announced a $2.3 million raise led by Rampersand VC, including Macdoch Ventures, Aconex’s founders Leigh Jasper and Rob Phillpot, Luxury Escapes co-founder Adam Schwab and Richmond AFL captain Trent Cotchin.
AmazingCo creates and manages experiences that help people connect and spend their time in a meaningful way. From kids entertainment to wine tours, date night activities and team building events, each experience is created and customised based upon personal preferences and a unique set of interactive planning and booking tools.
The first iteration of AmazingCo was founded by Silvia Hope, Jeremy Cox, Nick Brozovic and Daniel Cox in 2012 as a traditional kids entertainment company. After delivering more than 6,000 events a year they realised they had more data and insights into consumer preferences and desires – and in particular unmet demand.
What is AmazingCo looking to achieve?
“Traditional entertainment businesses don’t scale well, so it has remained largely a cottage industry. With our combination of experiences across entertainment, data and technology, we were able to take a different view,” Ms Hope said.
“We developed a centralised platform that understood what people wanted and, as a result of our scale and search traffic, identified where demand was not being met. And because of our scale we could build solutions, quickly, to meet those demands.”
“Not only did that turbocharge our ability to scale, it also allowed us to expand into new verticals and new geographies. We’re now a leading provider in multiple categories across Australia and have also launched in 8 US cities in the last 8 months,” she said.
The entertainment and recreation industry is one of the largest in the world, with data group IBIS World estimating it as more than USD 450 billion in the US alone, including the performing arts, events and food & entertainment industries.
Rampersand VC cofounder Paul Naphtali commented: “We watched as Silvia and Jeremy grew their team and business and were struck by the clever way they are able to use the data and bring technology to a previously analog industry. It is remarkably similar to how Netflix uses data to create content, AmazingCo uses data to create experiences. The true magic is the ability to do so at high margins, with off the charts customer satisfaction.”
What is AmazingCo doing differently?
AmazingCo is the first to tackle this highly fragmented, antiquated market in the way Netflix approached digital content production.
“No one saw the opportunity to operate as a holistic experiences platform in this huge industry before, as events companies traditionally don’t scale or manage well across multiple types of experiences,” Ms Hope said. “We now have proof our processes and platform can operate successfully across very different verticals. So we’re uniquely positioned to be the first company to do so and to scale globally.”
After the successful initial expansion of the company’s experience offering, AmazingCo is turning its focus to international growth and expansion.
Part of the company’s aggressive growth plan is to expand its operations across the US, already having launched in 8 major cities, including Los Angeles, Boston and most recently Philadelphia. The decision to raise capital was made to support the company’s aggressive growth plans, and to keep evolving the AmazingCo experience portfolio and proprietary platform.
“Having run a sustainable business for a few years meant that raising capital wasn’t imperative to sustain the business as it was,” Mr Cox says.
“But with our proprietary platform and data-driven processes we have found ourselves in a unique position to help people spend their most important free time in a more meaningful way. We have the chance to help people build stronger connections and improve their quality of life, and that’s way too exciting to not put in a higher gear. So we made the decision to raise capital to accelerate our global expansion and growth.” Mr Cox says.
