Banzai Raises $15 Million in Venture Debt Financing

Banzai Raises $15 Million in Venture Debt Financing to Grow its SaaS Event Marketing Platform

• Venture Debt round led by Columbia Pacific Business Finance with additional investment from Gaingels
• “This funding allows Banzai to accelerate growth and provide solutions that enable results-driven marketers to adapt and thrive in the changing world of event marketing.” - Joe Davy, CEO, Banzai

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Banzai, the leader in event marketing, announced today the successful closing of $15 million in venture debt funding. The funding was led by Columbia Pacific Advisors and will enable Banzai to expand further to service the company’s ever-growing roster of customers, which includes companies like Nextiva, Red Hat, DataRobot, and Egnyte, along with over 3,000 other customers.

“Gaingels's core mission to build a more accessible and equitable venture ecosystem is centered around creating community”

In the past six months, Banzai has expanded their virtual event and webinar solutions through two critical acquisitions, including virtual event platform High Attendance and browser-based webinar solution Demio. The new funding aligns with Banzai’s near-term plan to reach profitability while maintaining a triple-digit growth rate.

“Going forward, companies will win or lose based on their ability to educate and engage with their buyers. This allows Banzai to accelerate growth and provide solutions that enable results-driven marketers to adapt and thrive in the changing world of event marketing,” said Joe Davy, CEO of Banzai. “The team at Columbia Pacific shares our values of strategic growth and building an enduring company. We’re excited to have them as partners.”

“Joe and his first-rate team at Banzai have impressed us with their innovation, growth, and leadership, especially over the past year,” said Trent Stedman of Columbia Pacific. “Banzai’s solutions deliver remarkable ROI for event marketers. We look forward to helping Banzai achieve its vision as it provides simple, powerful SaaS tools to decision-makers in the multi-hundred billion dollar event marketing industry.”

As part of this transaction, Banzai is excited to welcome Gaingels, a leading venture syndicate focused on supporting companies in building cultures of diversity and inclusion. Through this important partnership, Banzai looks forward to deepening its commitment to supporting social change.

"Gaingels's core mission to build a more accessible and equitable venture ecosystem is centered around creating community,” said Lorenzo Thione, managing partner at Gaingels. “We are proud to be participating in Banzai's financing, whose event marketing solutions are helping communities and events be closer and cross physical and digital boundaries, and we are resolved on helping Banzai grow and scale while building a culture that reflects the diversity of its executive teams, staff, and customers."

About Banzai

Banzai’s mission is to support educational experiences that enable millions of professionals — to learn, grow, and connect.

Banzai is a leading enterprise SaaS provider of marketing automation solutions for experiential marketing through webinars and events. Banzai is used by companies like Nextiva, Red Hat, DataRobot, and Egnyte. Banzai’s marketing automation solution helps marketers have more successful webinars and events by growing their audience and creating more engaging experiences.

About Columbia Pacific Advisors

Columbia Pacific Advisors, LLC (“CPA”) is a Seattle-based alternative investment firm with $2.9 billion of AUM. CPA manages funds across real estate equity, direct lending, and opportunistic strategies and utilizes deep fundamental research as it seeks to generate consistent risk-adjusted returns for investors.

About Gaingels

Gaingels is the leading investment syndicate in support of and representing the LGBTQ community and allies in the venture capital space. With over $170,000,000 deployed into a portfolio of over 300 companies, Gaingels seeks to, directly and indirectly, influence the venture ecosystem towards greater diversity, inclusion, and equity of access. Gaingels invests in companies resolved on building diverse and inclusive teams who are aligned with our mission and seek to expand and embrace LGBTQ leadership into their companies and boards. Gaingels is a founding co-signer of the Diversity Term Sheet Rider Initiative to increase access to venture funding events for non-traditional check writers, and regularly co-invests with select VC leads across a variety of sectors, from technology to B2B, healthcare and consumer, in competitive and over-subscribed rounds from Seed to Growth/pre-IPO.

You can read the full release here.

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