The Next Phase of CMX and Bevy - Announcing our Series B Funding

BIG news!

It was a little over a year ago that we announced that CMX and Bevy would be teaming up. We knew that together, we could accelerate our mission to bring community teams the tools, education, and network they need to thrive.Today, we’re thrilled to announce the next chapter. Bevy and CMX have raised $15,000,000 in Series B funding to further accelerate our shared mission. This funding comes from one of the top venture firms in Silicon Valley, Accel Partners, as well as past CMX Summit speaker Ryan Smith (CEO and co-founder at Qualtrics) and existing investor Upfront Ventures.This funding comes at an unusual time for the community industry. The coronavirus pandemic has shaken things up for community teams, and strategies look drastically different than they did just a few months ago.We’ve been working hard to support members of the CMX and Bevy community as you’ve all been navigating this transition. We’ve been working to shift our strategy as well.I’m really excited about this funding not just because of the additional capital we can invest into the community (which is really, freaking exciting), but because of what it says about the community industry. For years, we’ve been banging the drum, working to help businesses see the massive opportunity to invest in building meaningful communities. It truly feels like businesses are finally getting it. For the investors out there who say they believe in the value of community, our investors are putting their money where their mouth is. This is one of the largest investments made into community technology in some time, and I don’t think it will be the last.This pandemic has shone a bright light on the value of community. It’s highlighted the important role a business can play in bringing their customers together and activating their biggest experts and champions.

So what does this funding mean for the CMX community? How will this impact you?

1. New virtual gathering technology and spaces

A key focus will be on how we can accelerate the development of technology to bring communities together virtually. CMX Connect, our community-led, local events program has entirely shifted to virtual, and will remain that way until we can gather in-person again.We will be building new tools and spaces to help the CMX community gather virtually. This will be powered through the Bevy platform that CMX Connect has been running on for a couple years. And all Bevy customers will have access to these same virtual event tools.Whether it’s CMX Summit, or our local gatherings, events have always been a key part of the CMX community experience. A global pandemic won’t stop us. We hosted CMX Global for 2,800 people a few weeks ago, and there’s a lot more to come!

2. Development of CMX Academy

We’ve been hard at work on new digital training programs for the past several months, and there’s a bigger need for virtual education now than ever before. We’ll be investing more heavily in the development of CMX Academy to provide teams with training programs to execute on world-class community strategies.Our first two courses are:

1. The Community MBA - A crash course in tying community to business objectives and metrics.
2. The C2C Event Program Playbook - Learn how to identify and activate community champions to organize events on your behalf.

3. Growing the content and research team

There’s so much research to be done in the community industry and we just haven’t had the bandwidth to do everything we’ve wanted to. With this new funding, we’ll be building out the CMX content team and you can expect to see more studies, articles, webinars, and case studies.Key reports like the Community Industry Report and The CMX Guide to Community Platforms will be updated regularly, with more long-form reports to come. Let us know in the comments if you have ideas for research we should consider publishing.A huge part of our work at CMX is to highlight the work of amazing community teams, and share their lessons with the rest of the industry, so we can all grow together. We kicked off the Community Industry Awards this year to spotlight the top community professionals in the world. We’ll continue to grow that program, and will be publishing more case studies and articles to show you how the best companies get it done.

4. Website improvements

We’ve been wanting to give our website a lot of love for a while. Now it’s going to happen. Look for all new designs, a new job board, new blog designs, and a more cohesive brand and experience. We have years of content on the website and we want to make it easy for you to find the insights you need when you need it. We’ve already started redesigning the website as you may have noticed. Lots more updates to come.

With great capital comes great responsibility.

We know, more money doesn’t always translate into better communities. Investments come with expectations of growth. Sometimes it’s all too easy for companies to hit the gas and lose sight of what made their community so special in the first place.Yes, we have those high expectations of our business too. We want to build a successful software and community business, we want to grow, and continue to invest in this industry, we want to help more companies build thriving communities that help their members learn, connect, and grow.We will always be transparent about our business goals. CMX and Bevy will grow together. We will continue to invest in helping our community, while making sure we can tie engagement back to business outcomes. I want us to always practice what we preach. And I know you’ll all continue to hold us accountable.We’re really excited for this next chapter. We have the resources we need to accomplish the mission CMX set out to achieve over six years ago. We’re excited about all the things we can do for the community. Community building is the most important work in the world. We’re excited to see this industry get it’s due.If you have any questions or ideas about how we can better help you, email us at team@cmxhub.com.Onward!

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