Salesforce prides itself on its full suite of tools for businesses, but CEO Marc Benioff sees ample opportunity for a startup that is helping brands maintain a consistent presence online.
San Francisco-based Brandcast has kept a low profile but is ready to launch to the public today. Benioff led Brandcast’s seed and first round of financing and is an advisor to the founding team.
Above: Brandcast CEO Hayes Metzger
In a nutshell, the company helps brands create a website, store, or social media profile, and drive traffic to that destination.
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Brandcast CEO Hayes Metzger is a former Salesforce platform engineer, and the cofounder of Bandpage, a startup that helps musicians organize their web presence. He bumped into Benioff at a conference several years ago while working at Bandpage, and they kept in touch.
“We started meeting regularly to talk about cloud software and social media,” he said.
According to Metzger, brands were creating “BandPages” despite the fact the service was specifically designed for musicians.
“He [Benioff] pointed out from the beginning that while BandPage was a great tool for musicians, there was also a huge opportunity to do similar things for other kinds of businesses,” Metzger explained.
Brandcast is initially targeting customers that have outgrown self-service tools but can’t afford legacy management software systems. The company is currently in limited beta and is used by Etsy shop owners, authors, filmmakers, and the like.
Interested? Brandcast is offering a free one year subscription for the first 1,000 signups.
Marc Benioff photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
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