Jun 15, 2022 - Business

St. Pete company backed by Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban and the Spontivly leaders

Mark Cuban (left). Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images. Marissa Huggins and Anthony Nagendraraj. Photo courtesy of Spontivly.

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.
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