Over the past year or so, I have been working on a new start-up called BrightWhistle with co-founder Chad Mallory. We have been a bit stealthy, waiting on today’s hard launch to talk more broadly about what we’re doing. To read more about our story, go to our company blog here. I am super excited about this new adventure!
Here is the press release regarding the seed round of funding we just closed this morning:
Digital Marketing Startup BrightWhistle Receives Funding to Fuel Development of Customer Acquisition Platform
BrightWhistle Already Generating Results for Health Care Service Providers
ATLANTA – July 26, 2011 – BrightWhistle Inc., a first-in-class online customer and patient acquisition management platform provider, announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Atlanta-based Hamilton Ventures. Eastside Partners and other prominent angel investors also participated in the round. Jamie Hamilton, managing partner, Hamilton Ventures, and Emerson Fann, managing partner, Eastside Partners, will join the company’s board of directors. Former Weather Channel and Disney executive and prominent Atlanta angel investor Paul Iaffaldano will also join the board.
With several health care clients already realizing a significant ROI using the BrightWhistle solution, the company will use this investment to fuel continued growth in the health services sector as well as future expansion into multi-location businesses and marketing agencies. The funding will also help augment the engineering team in order to enhance the company’s platform.
Leveraging premium content from its proprietary network, BrightWhistle’s first-in-class platform enables a digital marketer to build and manage a matrix of location/practitioner sites designed to magnify a company’s online presence. The same platform powers targeted search and social media ad campaigns designed to attract, target, qualify and convert new patients and customers.
“Current marketing automation tools help manage leads once they’ve entered the pipeline, but marketers continue to face intense pressure to fill the pipeline with new, highly qualified leads that actually convert into new customers,” said Greg Foster, co-founder and CEO, BrightWhistle. “This approach goes well beyond traditional means of acquiring new patients and represents a sea change in how marketers take control of the patient/customer acquisition process.”
Prior to BrightWhistle, Foster served on the management team of three successful start-ups, including Southern Direct, a company he founded and ultimately sold to Turner Broadcasting. He then served as vice president of corporate development at Turner and later as a digital media-focused venture capitalist with Noro-Moseley Partners. He currently serves as an entrepreneur-in-residence for Chrysalis Ventures.
“At the heart of our approach is a platform capable of generating and managing hyper-localized sites powered by high quality content that educates and informs prospective consumers,” said Chad Mallory, co-founder and CTO, BrightWhistle. “When combined with our system that scales the targeting and conversion of prospects within search and social media platforms like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, the complete solution serves as an end-to-end customer acquisition system.” Prior to BrightWhistle, Mallory was co-founder and CTO of Nexteppe, a company designed to serve the lead generation needs of the automotive marketplace.
“BrightWhistle’s pioneering approach to automating the online customer acquisition process combined with the business, technology and marketing expertise of the founders sets BrightWhistle apart from other digital marketing and advertising vendors,” said Jamie Hamilton, managing partner, Hamilton Ventures. “Hamilton Ventures is excited to be a part of a venture that is already impacting the way health care service providers are finding new patients.”
About BrightWhistle Inc.
Established in 2010, BrightWhistle drives new business for health care service providers, multi-location businesses and marketing agencies. By integrating PPC Ad Management, a digital matrix of branded websites and quality content, BrightWhistle’s first-in-class online customer and patient acquisition management platform increases new customer count while decreasing acquisition costs. BrightWhistle, one of the few companies with official access to the Facebook Ads API, has been named one of the Top 40 Innovative Companies in Georgia for 2011 by the Technology Association of Georgia. BrightWhistle is based in Atlanta, Ga. and can be found at brightwhistle.com.
About Hamilton Ventures
Hamilton Ventures, LLC is a privately held investment company actively engaged in making investments on behalf of its principals and its co-investment partners, with a focus on providing expansion capital to rapidly growing companies. Hamilton Ventures provides investment services exclusively to the Hamilton Ventures sponsored investments. Among the services provided are identification of investment opportunities, evaluation of prospective investments for conformance with portfolio objectives, negotiation and consummation of transactions and ongoing asset management.
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Media Contact:
Name: Shannon Rentner
Phone: 404-931-2242
Email: shannon@brightwhistle.com
Stay tuned…
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