Mobilize raises $6.5M, appoints Laura Yecies as new COO

Mobilize, an Israeli network relationship management platform that offers group communication solutions for businesses, has announced the raise of $6.5 million in a Series A financing round led by Trinity Ventures and launch of its self-service version of its product. Other investors that participated in the round of capital include Floodgate Ventures, Hillsven Capital, Array Ventures, Upwest Labs in addition to SaaS angels such as Eoghan McCabe, CEO, Intercom.io, and Sanjay Subhedar. According to Sharon Savariego, Co-founder and CEO, Mobilize, the fresh flow of funds will be used to develop additional product capabilities, enhance partner integrations in furthering Mobilize networks and expand teams in offices across San Francisco and Tel Aviv. San Francisco-based Mobilize claims to offer communication solutions optimized to help companies manage and interact with external groups such as on-demand workers, developer groups, contractors, resellers, and influencers. While there is a hoard of group communication tools of the likes of Slack for internal communication, challenges of organizing and communicating with large external groups looms in large. And Mobilize is determined to address the same. Ajay Chopra, General Partner, Trinity Ventures believes that are while there over a billion groups active today, group communications solutions such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook have not evolved to meet their needs for situations where the communications are mission critical and not just casual chatter. He is also of the belief that Mobilize can potentially change that.

“The Mobilize team has seized on this business opportunity and taken group communications to the next level with a well-thought out platform optimized for effective group communication. Think of this as ‘Slack for external communications’ to actually get stuff done! The company’s rapid adoption by leading brands was proof to us of this unmet need,” he said.

Amongst other features Mobilize also offers services to aid marketplace seller communications, network communication, developer community management, accelerator program management, supply-side communication, program communication, CRM for communities, co-working space management and partner communication. It does so by enabling users the access to engagement analytics and follow-up mechanisms to track success and optimize participation. Savariego also took the opportunity to comment: “In the new economy, companies and organizations increasingly rely on large numbers of people outside their organization to achieve their missions. Groups have become business-critical and there is a growing need for group communication within every business.”

“We saw the group communication tools that existed were designed for small social groups but not adequate for professional organizers, so we created a dynamic platform enabling anyone to organize, motivate and lead their various groups toward action. The platform is flexible enough to support groups as diverse as brand ambassadors, developer networks, marketplace sellers, resellers and product beta testers,” Savariego added.

In addition Mobilize is also building out its core business team and has brought Laura Yecies onboard as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Mobilize, Yecies served as the CEO of SugarSync, Catch.com and Context Engines. She has also led sales and marketing teams at companies including CheckPoint, Yahoo! Mail and Netscape.

“I have always been excited by the power and impact of new communication tools. Mobilize has the potential to create and lead an enormous group communication market that’s growing quickly driven by the increasing importance of network-driven businesses. The time is perfect for a new category of Network Relationship Management products that we estimate to be over $65 billion in value and I am excited to help the Mobilize team lead this new category,” stated Yecies.

Earlier, Mobilize had raised $1.125 million in a seed round funding in November 2014 which was followed by a closed funding round worth $800,000 in June 2015. It also vouches to cater to a client roster with names like Etsy, Microsoft, MasterCard, Prezi, Docker and Seedcamp.