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Check out the pitch deck startup Raydiant, which aspires to be the Square of in-store tech, used to raise $13 million from investors including Mark Wahlberg
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- Raydiant, an internet-of-things startup, just raised $13 million, partially from celebrity backer Mark Wahlberg.
- The firm’s pitch deck, published here by Insider, shows the firm’s vision it presented to investors.
- Clients include Wahlberg’s burger chain, Harvard University, Bank of America, and more.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Mark Wahlberg, the movie star and owner of burger chain Wahlburgers, wanted to be able to talk to all the employees and customers at his restaurants at once — to “go live” from one of the chain’s locations and communicate with everyone in the store at once.
Video-conferencing tools were tricky, and a massive conference would have been impossible. The burger chain, which has video screens for menus and social media in every location, found a solution through Raydiant, an internet-of-things startup that runs an operating system for businesses to sync their technology. It’s been used at Wahlburgers locations for years, and the young company ended up creating a tool so Wahlberg could broadcast to everyone at once.
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Now he’s an investor in their latest fundraising round.
Raydiant just raised $13 million in their Series A, which was led by venture capital firms 8VC and Atomic, and included money from Wahlberg. The goal of the company is to be Square is to point-of-sale transactions or what Roku is streaming but for technology at store locations, said Bobby Marhamat, the firm’s CEO.
“You need things to work,” he said. “There’s no platform that does what ours does.”
Below is the 13-page pitchdeck that raised $13 million for the San Francisco-based company.
Slide 1
Raydiant
Raydiant began as a purely digital signage company in 2017, and when Marhamat joined the company roughly a year and a half ago, he saw the opportunity was bigger to be the connector for all technology a store or location uses.
Slide 2
Raydiant
The platform was the result of the strategy shift brought on by Marhamat, who is trying to coin the phrase “experience platform” to describe what the company does.
Slide 3
Raydiant
Raydiant believes businesses haven’t enjoyed the same advances in technology synchronization that consumers have.
While Roku, Google, Amazon, and more have introduced solutions to sync up different streaming services under one place, restaurants often have different systems for point-of-sale technology, digital signage, in-store music, and more.
Slide 4
Raydiant
The biggest headache Raydiant has been hearing from clients is that it is difficult to build and manage a huge operating system.
For small companies, Marhamat said, it’s stressful to add that on-top of running a small business. For large chains, it can be expensive and unwieldy, forcing the company to basically create a new wing to handle it.
Slide 5
Raydiant
The example Marhamat uses is McDonald’s, which had to spend billions to get technology uniformity across its thousands of locations.
Slide 6
Raydiant
This slide shows the different technology points a customer might interact with at a store, underscoring the importance that they are all on the same page.
Slide 7
Raydiant
The big reason Marhamat wanted to expand beyond just digital signage is the market opportunity for Raydiant’s operating system. While the young company is a ways away from being the go-to provider for every chain in the country, Marhamat believes the market is worth more than $1 trillion.
Slide 8
Raydiant
The firm certainly has big ambitions — hoping to become the Roku or Square of in-store technology.
Slide 9
Raydiant
The client list is diverse as well. Financial giants like Bank of America use the system in branches, while Harvard uses it for on-campus brick-and-mortar locations. Planet Fitness, with its thousands of locations, is a client along with Wahlburgers and Pizza Ranch.
According to a press release on the Series A raise, Raydiant has more than 2,500 customers.
Slide 10
Raydiant
Testimonials from an investor like Wahlberg should be expected — he’s also on the firm’s website touting the technology — but First Bank and Treasure Island also offer their public support.
The release from Raydiant notes that clients see an average revenue increase of 12% once implementing the system with more repeat customers.
Slide 11
Raydiant
More and more businesses are using more screens, and Raydiant has found those companies to be the most profitable and also most loyal, which is why they are targeting this segment of the market.
Through August of last year, more than half of subscriptions to their operating system have come from screen-heavy companies.
Slide 12
Raydiant
Raydiant has worked to partner with leading point-of-sale and video-conferencing technology providers, such as Zoom and BlueJeans, which has helped bolster Marhamat’s belief that no company offers a similar platform.
“The magic is the simplicity of it,” he said. “We connect everything for you in a matter of weeks, if not days.”
Slide 13
Raydiant
The presentation ends with one more reference to the company’s most famous advisor and investor. Atomic founder Jack Abraham is also an advisor for the start-up.