PODIUM ANNOUNCES $60 MILLION SERIES B ROUND.

• Author: Rawle, Chris

Podium has raised $60 million in a Series B round led by IVP with participation from Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator.

"This investment marks a big milestone in Podium's growth," says Eric Rea, cofounder and CEO. "Local businesses and service providers comprise roughly a third of the entire non-farm GDP. The vast majority of these companies aren't directly competing with online retailers for their services or products, but they are competing against their convenience. This investment will allow Podium to continue providing new tools to bridge that level of convenience and modernize the way these businesses communicate on a local level."

THE IDEA: CHANGE ONLINE REVIEWS

In late 2013, Mr. Rea met up with fellow BYU graduate Dennis Steele and began working on a remedy for small businesses, intent on finding a way that encouraged an accurate online portrayal. "There are millions of local businesses that don't have a representative story about them in terms of online reviews," says Mr. Rea. "Nobody goes to a tire shop and leaves a review about their experience, unless they had a bad experience or something incredible happened. The other 95 percent of customers don't think to do it."

Working from a spare bedroom in Mr. Rea's Provo apartment, the two cofounders hashed out specifics on creating software that encouraged interaction between business and consumer. They built a prototype in early 2014 and began selling door-to-door, hoping small businesses would bite. "Whatever the story being told out there is, it should be accurate," says Mr. Rea. "We built this product making it super easy to do just that and it took off."

Mr. Rea and Mr. Steele experienced enough early success that two Utah-based venture capital firms took note: Kickstart Seed Fund and Peak Ventures, who agreed to a $500,000 seed round with Podium in 2014. Both cofounders agreed the capital influx should be used to hire a talented engineer capable of reworking the software into a more sustainable model.

This led them to the door of Arthur Weagel, Podium's current Head of Engineering. At the time, Mr. Weagel was working for Adobe but open to the possibilities Podium presented. He sat down in Mr. Rea's living room, ate pizza with both cofounders, and got a taste of their vision.

In my visit to Podium's Lehi office, Mr. Rea recounted a recent meeting he had with Mr. Weagel, where they discussed this initial meeting. "I asked him, 'Why did you...