Marketing Spotlight: Run The World Gets $10.8 Million in New Series A Funding

Run The World is a virtual events startup with its headquarters in Mountain View, California, and small teams in Taiwan and China, that is just one year old. It had launched with seed funding of $4.3 million. Yet it has been speedily recognized to the point where $10.8 million in Series A funding has now come its way from the earlier backer, Andreessen Horowitz, and a new backer, Founders Fund. Other investors include Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Capital and Will Smith’s Dreamers VC.

Those firms have a keen interest in the forward-looking platform of Run The World that concentrates on each and every functionality that a conference organizer might require when his or her company is rethinking on a permanent basis how to produce events that will include far-flung participants. They provide that information by means of video conferencing, networking, interactivity, and ticketing. Run The World earns 25% of the ticket sales in exchange for the templates used, the ticket sales, streaming, payment processing, and so forth

CEO and Co-founder Xiaoyin Qu, who earlier led products for Instagram and Facebook, said that since launching in February of last year, Run The World decided to waive all the set-up fees for events that were impacted by the globally destructive coronavirus, and they are receiving hundreds of event requests every day. That has allowed the startup to double its core team to 30 employees and enabled organizers from numerous countries to oversee over 2,000 events so far.

Qu also states that many event planners who were using Zoom to run webinars are now choosing Run The World because of its focus on social and engagement features. Event attendees are invited to create a video profile similar to an Instagram Story. The profile informs the other attendees as to who they are. It also organizes “cocktail parties,” where it matches attendees, who can choose who they want to follow up with afterward.

The startup still has stiff competition in Zoom, the nine-year-old company that has seen business soar since February with a reported 300 million daily participants using their service as of the end of April plus other similar companies who are attempting to be in the same field and have also acquired recent venture backing that will increase the competition in this now popular and sought-after field.

Xiaoyin Qu met co-founder, Xuan Jiang, at Facebook, where Jiang was a technical lead for Facebook ads, events, and stories. Andreessen partner Connie Chan had previously been joined by other seed-stage backers such as GSR Ventures, Pear Ventures, and Unanimous Capital.

This fresh new funding is expected to help its business, says Qu. So far Run The World has grown through word of mouth, but now the startup’s plans are to grow its team and presumably will begin spending at least a bit on marketing with a boost from its investors who are social media savvy.