St. Pete company backed by Mark Cuban

When Anthony Nagendraraj agreed to move his company from Canada to St. Pete, he was eager to start fishing. On Wednesday, he caught a shark.

Driving the news: Mark Cuban has signed on as a major investor for Nagendraraj's company Spontivly, bringing the "Shark Tank" investing king to Tampa Bay.

• The company couldn't disclose the amount Cuban is investing.

What they do: Spontivly is "essentially Google Analytics for community," Nagendraraj told Axios.

• Its software integrates with a company's suite of community tools like Slack, Eventbrite, Zoom and different social media platforms to provide real-time analytics that measure community engagement, growth, and impact across different platforms.

What they're saying: "All of these (online tools) are great independently but they don't talk to each other," he said. "And that's fundamentally the problem."

• "The pandemic left people closer together but seemingly more scattered than ever," co-founder Marissa Huggins told Axios. "That was one of the major shifts for us."

Flashback: The company closed a seed round in December with $1.2 million, primarily from their top investor, Hootsuite, who Nagendraraj and Huggins say is looking to acquire the company.

• Cuban is now their second biggest investor.

How it happened: Nagendraraj credited Tampa Bay Wave leaders Richard Munassi and Linda Olson for Spontivly's success in St. Pete in a LinkedIn post announcing the deal with Cuban.

• After launching Spontivly in 2019, Nagendraraj and Huggins were selected for Tampa Bay Wave's 2021 TechDiversity cohort and later joined startup hub Embarc Collective.

What's next: Spontivly will move the entire company over to their shared office space in St. Pete by September, Nagendraraj and Huggins told Axios.

• They project their team of 11 will grow to 65 full-time employees in the next three years.