Paulo Martins, the company’s creator, grew up in Brazil playing video games, an industry that relies on creating communities among its users. He later moved to the United States, where he worked at Hulu as an early employee, helping the streaming TV service expand to over 7 million members and $1 billion in sales. Martins intended to assist firms establish a similarly devoted set of customers to become their core audience when it came time to launch his own company. Arena gives you the ability to integrate online conversations into your website so that people can engage with one another, work together to solve problems, and build a feeling of community around the business.
Martins added, “We develop a Discord for any single B2B or B2C company that wants to establish that community, that interaction, on their website with only one line of code.” “It’s a simple method to set up a chat experience, and we want to assist our clients engage their audiences in order to develop a community and establish trust,” says the company. It’s also about getting a better knowledge of your clients so you can provide better experiences with less filtered info and increase transactions. At the end of the day, community-building is all about marketing.
“We’re assisting you in engaging with customers when they’re in the product because that’s the greatest moment to interact to persuade them to subscribe, purchase a ticket, make a donation, or buy items,” he explained. Arena stands between the CDP (customer data platform) on the back end and marketing automation on the front end, according to Murat Bicer, who is heading CRV’s Series an investment in the company. It helps Arena users create logical connections to better understand the consumer.
“Basically, Arena assists a brand in determining how a client wants to communicate with them.” This might be done by visiting their website, viewing movies, engaging in a conversation, or reading blogs, among other things. “And then correlating all of that information to a single consumer so you can say, ‘Oh, this individual who comes to your website and asks about a product is actually this exact person,” he explained. Martins understands that online communities can easily degrade, as we’ve seen many times over the years, and that there are rules of interaction, and that the customer may have a monitor watching the conversation to ensure that it doesn’t go out of hand.
So far, the strategy appears to be working. He claims to have 25,000 consumers in 50 countries. With 35 people, the firm is rapidly expanding, and he expects that number to quadruple by the end of the year. As an immigrant founder, he claims that diversity is built into the DNA of his organization. “Diversity is the default for us.”
“It’s practically in our DNA,” he added, “particularly as a sole founder in the firm, coming from a history where I had to navigate immigration and attempt to grasp the venture capitalist sector and the dynamics of how to develop a company.” With a $13.6 million Series A round announced today, the firm has taken another important step forward in that process. CRV led the round, which included Craft Ventures, Artisanal Ventures, and Vela Partners, as well as a number of industry angels.
