Canadian digital solutions platform Vendasta has put some of the C$119.5 million (about US$97 million at the current XR) it raised this spring to use, acquiring Toronto-based CalendarHero for an undisclosed amount.
The deal adds another Vendasta owned and operated solution to its stack. The deal also brings 100,000 into Vendasta’s platform, many of them small business owners.
“The acquisition of CalendarHero is wonderful news for our partners,” Vendasta CEO Brendan King told Localogy Insider. “Ultimately what we’ve done is advance our technology roadmap by about five years. They have integrations and value that we had only just begun to dream of with our existing meeting scheduler product. We saved time, effort, and money by bringing CalendarHero into our ecosystem. Plus, the team is world-class.
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Finding a Home
CalendarHero was launched in 2016 as Zoom.ai. The company raised more than $5 million before rebranding as CalendarHero earlier this year. One clear CalendarHero competitor is Calendly. But the bookings technology space is crowded. Companies randing from Doodle to Mindbody are coming at the space from different angles. So it may well behoove CalendarHero to find some safety by embedding itself in a larger, better-capitalized organization like Vendasta.
“Joining Vendasta is a great next step for our team,” said Roy Pereira, founder of CalendarHero. “The platform’s massive customer base and impressive growth, combined with our industry-leading scheduling technology is a clear win for both companies and our customers.”
Vendasta’s reseller partners can activate CalendarHero from the Vendasta Marketplace, either for their own use or to sell it to their small business customers.
CalendarHero essentially uses AI to automate meetings workflow. Its core user base is in sales, marketing, and customer success teams. One notable feature is the ability to embed CalendarHero into a business website. The allows companies to convert browsers into booked meetings right on the site.
Spinning the Flywheel
King told us the deal checked off some key boxes that Vendasta applies to all of its acquisitions. Vendasta currently supports more than 60,000 channel partners. And those partners represent more than 5.5 million SMBs worldwide. Vendasta needs to keep its stack fresh if it wants to keep growing its reseller channel.
“Acquisitions are part of our strategy,” Brenda explained. “As the Vendasta ecosystem evolves, we’re looking for opportunities that can either spin our flywheel—bring us more partners, small business users, or more technology and vendors—or accelerate our existing technology roadmap.”
“At a high level, our strategy is based on demand, supply, and distribution. On the demand front, small businesses need software products and services to run. Software companies and vendors supply the solutions. Then there are the distribution channels, which are the ways that small businesses work with trusted experts. We want to add more products and services to our offering, which will attract more channel partners. In turn, that brings in more small business clients to our ecosystem, which attracts more vendors. Acquisitions help us strategically accelerate that flywheel.”
