Goldcast

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Founders: Kishore Kothandaraman, Palash Soni & Aashish Srinivas
Founding: 2020
Mission: Empowering B2B marketers to use events as a key go-to-market activity by helping them host incredible experiences
Employees: 100+ & ~25% Local
Workplace: Remote (co-working space in Boston)
Stage & Capital Raised: Series A & $40M
Investors: Westbridge Capital, Unusual Ventures, Afore Capital, Hubspot Ventures, Underscore VC and a group of assorted angels here
Key Customers: Amplitude, GitHub, Salesloft, Lever, Drift, Toast, Zuora & more here
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $125M – $300M (assuming they sold ~20% of the company in the $28M Series A)
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

Goldcast is a “digital events platform for B2B marketers”. Founded by Harvard Business School students Kishore Kothandaraman, Palash Soni & Aashish Srinivas they host digital event experiences that get prospects and customers excited about your brand. Goldcast was born out of the pandemic amidst the rapidly accelerating shift from physical to digital and the unmet needs of a very specific, important audience: B2B marketers. 

Let’s go back in time to the spring, summer, or fall of 2020. Which was basically all the same. Because we were sheltered in our homes. For so long. We clicked from work zooms to family zooms to happy hour zooms with friends. Or happy hours with work friends. More zooms. All the time. There might have even been a different platform mixed in there but Zoom became Kleenex by year’s end. That is the effect the product had on us at this very unique moment in history. There’s crossing the chasm and then there’s onboarding millions of people stuck in their homes to video conferencing due to a global pandemic. Digital decorum was lost. Lawyers became cats. A CNN contributor may or may not have exposed themselves “thinking they were on mute”. It was a time. 

And then imagine the event marketers. They were sitting there like “ok, we can’t host an event but…what about a zoom webinar?” And their colleagues screamed in unison “NO!!!” 

Kishore, Palash & Aashish were paying attention over at HBS. They came to the U.S. to learn at one of the most elite business schools in the world and were presented with one of the most unique market shifts in the history of mankind. There was a clear need for a richer, more native digital events product that would feel like you were stepping outside of a zoom type environment and going to an event from the comfort of your own home. There was an opportunity to create a “gold standard” for this epochal business shift. 

A great opportunity and impeccable timing. Goldcast was born.

The Goldcast platform enables marketers to host all kinds of events, from small webinars to large summits across a variety of Hybrid & Virtual experiences. They have pre built templates their customers can leverage with their own branding & typeface to customize the experiences for their own needs with a focus on two key pillars:

  • Create an incredible attendee experience
  • Providing the right engagement insights to build relationships with prospects and customers

The attendee experience and customization tools are top notch, for sure. They aspire to deliver a “Netflix like experience” for their event organizers and attendees. But that’s not what makes Goldcast so valuable to its customers. The underlying analytics and integrations really drive the value. This product was built to measure revenue outcomes. Goldcast has built seamless integrations with tools like Salesforce, Slack, Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot, and Eloqua. They help qualify leads by measuring a number of “in event” touchpoints like attendance rate, time spent in the event, qualified leads and demo requests, pipeline requests, and other activities that help score prospects and later track conversion ROI.

They are compliant with SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA certifications. They offer translation services to make digital events global. Their video feeds can be toggled to allow for buffer time on slower connections. All the little details that help deliver a more secure, better viewing experience. Packages start with a 2 year commitment because, well, they’re resource strapped due to surging demand! There’s an upfront implementation and customer support needs to be staffed to provide a truly white glove live-event solution that is unique in the market. As they scale, they hope to offer more self-serve options and lower priced starter packages too!

One really smart thing the team did from the early days was instituting a panel of advisors they could leverage for feedback. Many of these advisors became customers as they grew. Other early startups take note! This surely helped inform their approach on what to build and who to build for and, unsurprisingly, is closely representative of the logos proudly displayed on their website. Creating customer loyalty early! And often!

Business is booming. I caught up with their Head of Operations, Stephanie Roulic, and she relayed to me that the company’s employee base has more than doubled in size over the past year. They’ve grown their team in Boston and presence in India too. How cool is that for the Founders to bring jobs back to their home country? Virtual events are here to stay and so is Goldcast.

Operators to Know:

My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Goldcast team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally

Key Roles To Be Hired (U.S.):

If I was interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 100 employees? This is growing pain territory for any startup. Will need new tools, processes, and team members to support this growth
  • What are the next major growth areas for Goldcast? Will the team push further into the enterprise or are they prioritizing self-serve “PLG” tools to help serve SMBs & mid-market clients? Product roadmap insight is essential to better understanding a team you might join
  • Where will the company scale over the next 12-24 months? Will you continue to prioritize hiring in Boston, remotely in the U.S., or internationally? To help better understand the team’s growth plans
  • What is the long term vision for the company? As they’ve seen rapid success, it would be good to understand how the vision is broadening over the coming years

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Goldcast you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring digital & hybrid experiences to happier, more engaged global audiences  in the years ahead. See you on the interwebs!

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