Colombian Event Platform Rebus Raises $415,000 Seed Round

Rebus, a Colombian event and ticketing platform launched in 2017 and led by co-founder Juliana Villalba Torres, has raised $415,000 in seed funding from several angel investors, including Angel Ventures, Magma Partners, Enlaces, Quake Capital, Avalancha Ventures and several individual angel investors in the region.

Rebus is a platform that allows event organizers to present upselling options to attendees allowing them to tailor their experience with additional products, upgrades and services. The Rebus plug-in works with event management and ticketing platforms and applications by activating a pop-up and messaging platform recommending additional products presented by the event organizer.

The capital raise comes after Villalba participated in the Quake Capital acceleration program in the US and the Google Launchpad Accelerator in Colombia in 2018. Rebus expects to use 70% of the raise to expand into Mexico, where the platform has signed up seven pilot event promoters. The remaining funds will go towards product development. Rebus also expects to expand this year into Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. The country already has customers in Colombia, Perú, Costa Rica, Panamá, Guatemala, and México.

“Jose (co-founder José Berrio) and I were speakers and experience consultants for many events in Latin America, and that’s how we identified the main challenges of the industry. When you are a passionate entrepreneur, you start seeing new business opportunities in all the challenges you come across. We decided to combine my expertise in organizing events with Jose’s tech and product design background to create a simple solution for upselling and creating epic experiences for event attendees. We want to become the primary ancillary revenue experts in the world and help the event industry create and monetize upsell experiences throughout the event lifecycle and convert attendees into buyers,” said Villalba in a statement shared with Finance Colombia.

Angel Ventures, through AVP Seed Fund I, a seed fund based in Peru, led the round and facilitated the creation of an investment syndicate. The round includes investors from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, and the United States. In addition to Angel Ventures, the following investors participated in the seed round: Magma Partners, Links, Winnipeg Capital, SC Capital, Impulsum Ventures, Enlaces, KBIC, Quake Capital and Avalancha Ventures. Angel Ventures and Enlaces are members of Xcala, a regional platform of angel investor networks.

Greg Mitchell, Regional Director at Angel Ventures, discussed the investment round: “Juliana and Jose are inspiring and relentless founders. The support Angel Ventures has received from the Xcala platform allowed us to organize a syndicate of angel investors from across Latin America and invest together in Rebus to back Juliana and Jose. This is a truly cross-border seed round in a regional startup with global potential.”