Addvocate, a US-based employee advocacy platform for firms to promote their brands and businesses via their employees, has closed a $2m series A round of funding lead by Rogers Venture Partners, the corporate venturing unit of Canada-based media company Rogers Communications, and including the participation of angel investor Karen Riley.
Previously, Addvocate received seed funding from angel investors including Cyan and Scott Banister, Jesse Engle, Jay Baer, Jin Koh and Tim Kopp.
The series A funds will be used to accelerate the company’s growth and developing its employee advocacy platform.
Will Stewart, general partner at Rogers Venture Partners, said: “It is not every day you find a natural leader like Marcus, coupled with a team with such deep domain expertise in the corporate social media space. We were impressed by how Addvocate was able to launch its business with an amazing list of customer pilots in the Fortune 500.”
Jay Baer, author of Youtility and aseed investor in the company, said: “In almost every company in the world, the employees collectively have far more social connections (and power) than the official company accounts. Addvocate harnesses this potential and makes it work for businesses and their people.”
Piers Cooper has joined Addvocate as Chief Operations Officer. Cooper was previously vice president of strategic business development at Oracle as well as a general partner at McKenna Capital.
Addvocate was founded by Marcus Nelson, former head of social media for Salesforce.com.