Event discovery and ticketing platform KweekWeek has raised a $3.25m seed round as it plans its expansion to New York and new European cities.
The London-based startup describes itself as a ‘one-stop-shop for event organisers and a personal concierge for event attendees’.
It lets hosts advertise and manage their events and helps attendees find personalised events for them based on location, history, and personal preferences.
The investment comes from angel investors from the entertainment, tech and banking industries.
Taking on a fragmented market
Event organisers on KweekWeek can create pages for a wide range of event types, including networking, nightlife, sport and entertainment.
Founded in 2012 by former banking professional Mehdi Nayebi and civil engineering graduate Tina Mashaalahi, it has now sold over 150,000 tickets through the platform.
Nayebi believes KweekWeek helps fix what is a “very fragmented process from a consumer’s point of view”.
They have to go to multiple sources to find out about events they are interested in, decide where to buy their ticket from, research the venue – processes that typically involve several disconnected sources.
The startup recently unveiled their new app on both iOS and Android.
New cities by new year
With the investment, the founders plan to expand to New York and other European cities by the end of the year. They also plan to improve the company’s technology and grow its sales teams.
Despite the substantial investment in KweekWeek, Nayebi says young European startups still struggle to raise funds, particularly compared to their American counterparts.
For all of the buzz around the London technology scene, there is still a lack of early stage institutional investment here, but these schemes [EIS] can be of great benefit to startups like ours.