Bevy's COVID pivot to virtual events reached a $30M ARR pace, 15x its 2019 level

Bevy built software for companies to hold and scale their communities and run in-person event programs. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, co-founder and CEO Derek Andersen says the business vanished: 'I was just sitting here in March and we had no business. I cleaned out my garage like three times.'

Bevy's customers were pivoting to taking everything virtual, so the startup pivoted with them. 'We realized this just unlocked what we wanted to do in the sense we want to bring people together. So we pivoted hard,' Andersen told Crunchbase News. The team redesigned the platform to help companies host virtual conferences, with contracts running between $20,000 and $1 million a year.

By March 2021, Andersen said, it was on pace to reach $30 million in ARR by year-end — a 15x increase from 2019 — and closed a $40 million Series C led by Accel with participation from LinkedIn, Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith and Upfront Ventures, taking total funding above $60 million. Among the individual participants, 70% were Black investors representing 25% of the money raised — 25 Black leaders including James Lowry, McKinsey & Co.'s first African American consultant, PayPal EVP and Facebook board member Peggy Alford, and former Beats by Dre CMO Omar Johnson.

The same period brought a hiring and diversity reckoning Andersen says he found embarrassing: a year earlier the company had no Black or brown employees, and by March 2021, 14% of its 100-person staff were Black, expected to reach 20% by September, with plans to hire an additional 150 employees over the next year.

On pace for $30 million in ARR by the end of 2021, a 15x increase from 2019, plus a $40 million Series C led by Accel with LinkedIn and Upfront.

COVID lockdowns erased the in-person conference business the platform was built for.

Customers themselves were moving their events virtual, so demand moved before the roadmap did.

The pivot served the founding goal — bringing people together — just through a new format, Andersen said.

A round in which 70% of individual participants were Black investors extended the same commitment to the cap table.

When your use case evaporates, following the customers' pivot — not defending the old product — converts a wipeout into the growth you were waiting for.

Andersen said Bevy would keep building on the platform and looked forward to a post-pandemic world where in-person events rejoin virtual ones, with about 150 additional hires planned. The company had raised more than $60 million to date. 'Companies never really had a playbook on how to do this,' investor James Lowry said of the diversity effort. 'We are now giving them a playbook and they want to run with it.'