Alyce picks up $11.5 million Series A to help companies give better corporate gifts #startups

Alyce, an AI-powered platform that helps sales people, marketers and event planners give better corporate gifts, has today announced the close of an $11.5 million Series A funding. The round was led by Manifest, with participation from General Catalyst, Boston Seed Capital, Golden Ventures, Morningside and Victress Capital.

According to Alyce, $120 billion is spent each year (just in the United States) on corporate gifts, swag, etc. Unfortunately, the impact of these gifts isn’t usually worth the hassle. No matter how thoughtful or clever a gift is, each recipient is a unique individual with their own preferences and style. It’s nearly impossible for marketers and event planners to find a one-size-fits-all gift for their recipients.

Alyce, however, has a solution. The company asks the admin to upload a list of recipients. The platform then scours the internet for any publicly available information on each individual recipient, combing through their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, videos and podcasts in which they appear, etc.

Alyce then matches each individual recipient with their own personalized gift, as chosen from one of the company’s merchant partners. The platform sends out an invitation to that recipient to either accept the gift, exchange the gift for something else on the platform, or donate the dollar value to the charity of their choice.

This allows Alyce to ensure marketers and sales people always give the right gift, even when they don’t. For charity donations, the donation is made in the name of the corporate entity who gave the gift, not the recipient, meaning that all donations act as a write-off for the gifting company.

The best marketers and sales people know how impactful a great gift, at the right time, can be. But the work involved in figuring out what a person actually wants to receive can be overwhelming. Hell, I struggle to find the right gifts for my close friends and loved ones.

Alyce takes all the heavy lifting out of the equation.

The company also has integrations with Salesforce, so users can send an Alyce gift from directly within Salesforce.

Alyce charges a subscription to businesses who use the software, and also takes a small cut of gifts accepted on the platform. The company also offers to send physical boxes with cards and information about the gift as another revenue channel.

Alyce founder and CEO Greg Segall says the company is growing 30 percent month-over-month and has clients such as InVision, Lenovo, Marketo and Verizon.