• PartySlate

  Participated · Seed · Oct 2017

  PartySlate operates a photo-first marketplace where venues, vendors, and event professionals showcase work, build networks, and connect directly with clients. The platform emphasizes high-quality photos and videos—more than 2 million event photos have been shared, with hundreds added daily. Over 40,000 venues, hotels, planners, and other vendors use PartySlate to display portfolios and grow their businesses; leading firms like Kehoe Designs have thousands of assets on the site. PartySlate says it uses network-driven algorithms and advanced analytics to make event planning more accessible and efficient. The company plans to leverage its HearstLab partnership and Hearst’s broader resources to raise awareness and accelerate growth. PartySlate positions itself to capture more of the expected expansion in the global events industry, which industry research projects will surpass $1.5 trillion by 2028. PartySlate is a digital platform where event professionals share work and hosts find inspiration, venues and vendors by browsing and saving event photos and creating Idea Boards. Co-founded in 2016 by Julie Roth Novack and John Haro and based in Chicago, the site showcases corporate events, galas, milestone events and weddings. Event planners can search for local venues and vendors, save photos, create Idea Boards to share with others, and read about event design trends. Event professionals and venues can post photos, create custom Idea Boards for clients, drive leads through a premium membership program, and contribute thought-leadership articles. The company recently raised funding and plans to use proceeds to expand geographically, launching in Dallas after activity in Chicago and Los Angeles. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. PartySlate is an online platform where event vendors—photographers, caterers and venue providers—post photos and profiles for consumers to browse ideas and find providers. The site, which went live in May and has been compared to Houzz, is currently free for both vendors and consumers. More than 2,000 vendors have posted on the site to date. PartySlate plans to introduce a subscription model charging vendors for premium positioning and aims to convert 5–10% of vendors to paid, elevated placements. The company has grown to 12 employees (up from five a year earlier), expanded from Chicago into Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and hopes to be in a dozen cities by year-end. PartySlate is based at 1871 and has participated in WiSTEM and Techstars Chicago.

• KnowledgeHound

  Participated · Series A · Nov 2016

  KnowledgeHound is a Chicago, IL-based platform that enables brands to activate, explore and analyze market research data to understand customers and design products. Led by founder Kristi Zuhlke, the company offers data analytics and visualization tools to surface insights and find instant answers from research. In November 2016 the company raised $2.7M in a Series A. Backers included George Spencer at Seyen Capital, Gaspar Group, InvestHER and BRJ Ventures. The company said it will use the funds to accelerate development of new technology. The financing is intended to support continued enhancement of its analytics and visualization capabilities for product and customer understanding. KnowledgeHound is a Chicago-based enterprise market research data-retrieval and visualization platform. It offers a natural-language search and data-visualization platform that lets researchers, marketers and sales teams find, visualize and analyze quantitative and qualitative consumer-research data. The company was co-founded by Kristi Zuhlke, a former Procter & Gamble consumer insights manager. KnowledgeHound focuses on improving its search engine, data-visualization and data-science capabilities. The article notes the company raised seed funding to continue investing in those teams and technologies.

No current team members are available.