New York, NY, Sept. 9, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dave Kerpen, CEO and founder of Likeable Local, "The Buddy Media of SMB's," announced the completion of a $1.5M seed round. Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups, led the round.
Other investors include Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles and founder of Entrepreneur's Organization, Maurice Reznik, former CEO of Maidenform, and Tom Dibenedetto, partner of the Boston Red Sox. Likeable Local raised the remainder of the funds through AngelList's syndicate.
With this financing, Kerpen hired Chief Revenue Officer, Will Morel, and launched the first iteration of Likeable Consultants, its partner program to help scale faster in the SMB market .
As CRO, Morel manages sales, marketing, and customer success at Likeable Local. Morel is an MBA graduate from the Wharton School of Business and has worked in a variety of financial and strategic roles for Morgan Stanley and ZocDoc.
"Likeable Local has tremendous growth potential and I am thrilled to help grow our company while helping SMB's be more successful, " Morel said.
Likeable Local's software incorporates four components: vertical specific content publisher, Turbopost ™ social ad technology, mobile friendly websites, and offline marketing kits. Along with full analytics, Likeable Local gives small businesses the tools they need to take control of and monetize their social media presence across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Likeable Local launched a B2B focused Likeable Consultants program in August. Likeable Consultants allows marketers and strategic consultants to resell and white label Likeable Local's software for their clients. Likeable Local plans to scale the consultants program throughout the rest of the year led by CEO, Dave Kerpen.
"The Likeable Consultants programs offers tremendous potential to further reach our target market and help both the consultants and their small business clients succeed with social," said Kerpen. "This will help us go from 700 customers to 7,000."
The funds will also be used to scale the development team in Portland, Maine. Led by MIT engineer CTO, Hugh Morgenbesser, Likeable Local is proud to be a part of the up and coming tech scene in Portland.
Dave Kerpen launched Likeable Local in 2013 in New York City. He previously co-founded and served as the CEO of Likeable Media, a twice-ranked-INC 500 social media marketing agency. He is the New York Times Bestselling author of Likeable Social Media and the most read LinkedIn influencer of all time with over 20 million page views.
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