Heyo Closes $2M Series A Round with Valleys' Ventures, LP

BLACKSBURG, Va., March 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Heyo, a software as a service (SaaS) company providing a social marketing platform for small businesses looking to capture likes, emails, and sales, today announced the closing of its Series A financing, a $2 million round from Valleys' Ventures, LP of Radford, VA.  Heyo intends to use the investment proceeds to accelerate its product development initiatives and user growth, by allowing the company to increase its hiring of developers.

Heyo is unique in providing a simple interface for users to plan social media campaigns that are pre-tested and result in high conversion rates.  Heyo's mission is to better connect users to existing and potential customers and therefore sell more products and services through social networks.

"We are extremely pleased with the results and look forward to selling more bags and engaging with even more customers using Heyo," said Amy Lombard, marketing manager at Mixed Bag Designs.

The more users adopt the Heyo platform, the better Heyo serves each user.  Heyo monitors campaign success and then recommends the highest converting campaign strategies to other customers.  The Heyo platform has the potential to drive success to businesses that previously struggled to get results from social marketing.

"Using Heyo, we added over 1,750 likes to our company's Facebook page and we've added over 900 emails to our database in under a week with no paid advertising," said Maggie Henris, the Social Media Manager for Joe's Entertainment.

Heyo's growth is directly correlating to the success it's helping businesses achieve.  The company added 118 trials in July of 2013. This number has grown 2,585%, to trial additions of 3,047 in January alone. Additionally, customer growth continues to accelerate.  Heyo added more customers in February of this year than it added in the entire fourth quarter of last year.

In addition to small businesses, agencies are transitioning from higher priced social marketing solutions and instead using Heyo to manage and launch social campaigns for their clients. "Our clients are valuing our services and wanting to pay us more each month due to the success Heyo is helping us create," said Patrick Eckstrom, CEO of MySMN Agency, which serves clients ranging from restaurants to lawyers.

Speaking for Valleys' Ventures, Rob Patzig, Chief Investment Officer of Third Security, LLC, said, "Nathan Latka has a clear vision for Heyo and a deep understanding of what small and medium sized businesses need to take advantage of social media.  We are excited to be a part of this opportunity and are particularly excited about a product release coming later this year."  Valleys' Ventures, the sole investor in this round, joins existing investors in Heyo, including David Cohen of Techstars and Paul Singh of 500 startups. 

Founder and CEO Nathan Latka says, "We will continue to obsess over building the most valuable social media marketing tool for small businesses and are focused on achieving this goal. We're excited to grow our team and will be aggressively hiring the sharpest engineering and marketing minds we can find to prepare for a new product release later this year - one that we think will really excite people."

If you're curious what that product release might be, Latka says you should go to Heyo.com and sign up for a trial on the home page.

ABOUT HEYO

Founded in 2012, Heyo is a Blacksburg, VA based company that provides a social marketing platform for small businesses looking to capture likes, emails, and sales.  Heyo is a SaaS company operating under Lujure Media Inc.

For more information, visit www.heyo.com

ABOUT VALLEYS' VENTURES

Valleys' Ventures, LP is a regional venture capital fund.  The fund's general partner is managed and operated by Third Security, LLC.  Third Security is a venture capital firm formed in 1999 to manage investments in public and private companies.  The Third Security team leverages its experience and expertise to guide companies toward category dominance.  More information is available at the firm's website, www.thirdsecurity.com.

CONTACT: Nathan Latka, 800-844-8640

SOURCE Heyo