Dazzle Closes Successful Fund Raise; Re-brands

• Raises £2.3m in seed funding round
• Telefonica and Finance Birmingham commit funds
• Rebrands as HelloDone

16th January 2020

Dazzle, the automated conversation platform, has closed its first seed funding round raising £2.3m from global corporates, government accelerators and individuals including Telefonica and Finance Birmingham.

The close of the funding round also sees the launch of the company’s rebrand as HelloDone.

Ed Hodges, CEO of HelloDone, said:

“The response to our tech and proposition has been incredible. We’ve always believed that we had a transformational product with HelloDone so to have such strong backing gives us even more confidence. Businesses have to start meeting consumers where they are, on WhatsApp, on Facebook Messenger, on Alexa and all the other messaging channels. HelloDone is scaling it’s conversational platform using natural language processing to enable businesses in the Transport, Home Delivery and Utilities space to solve customer needs via messaging channels and voice assistants. It’s an amazing platform and the funding will enable us to capture the growth potential we believe exists.

In a busy world people want the stuff of everyday life to be made easy HelloDone does that, whether it’s buying and managing train or coach tickets, querying your utility account or having a parcel delivered at the right time when you’re home.

The support we have had to date from the likes of Finance Birmingham and Telefonica has been brilliant and we can’t wait to continue the HelloDone story alongside them and our other investors.”

The £2.3m funding will support the growing business pipeline through investment in people and technology to continue to build and refine our conversational platform.

HelloDone is the brainchild of Ed Hodges and Pete Shannon, who set out to make it easy for customers to solve everyday tasks. It is a B2B2C white labelled automated conversation platform that allows transport, utilities and home delivery companies to deliver better customer engagement while reducing costs and driving new revenues. The HelloDone platform opens up today’s customers’ messaging channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Slack, to meaningful and rich engagement with businesses.

HelloDone has also rebranded from its original name Dazzle. Pete Shannon, Chief Product Officer of HelloDone, said:

“HelloDone – our new name – reflects directly the purpose of its technology: to solve everyday tasks easily. We wanted a brand that reflected both what is at the functional core of our platform but also how we are helping customers and businesses.

“Moving forward, HelloDone will be the brand name that carries us as we grow the platform and help businesses engage customers better and help customers get their daily tasks completed more efficiently.”

The Team

As well as Ed and Pete, HelloDone benefits from the vast experience of our other executive team members:

Owen Day, Chief Technology Officer

Owen has 20 years in developing mobile apps and SaaS platforms for start ups such as Shozu and Touchnote and corporates like Tesco. He was recently VP of Engineering at Masabi.

Mark Owens, Financial Director

Mark is a Portfolio CFO working with high profile London tech start-ups. He was the CFO for HouseTrip for 3 years which sold to TripAdvisor in 2014. He also has 10 years blue-chip finance experience, including FD for AA breakdown and a consultant for Boston Consulting Group.

Media

Ed Hodges, CEO
c/o Montfort Communications
Montfort Communications
James Olley
[email protected]
+44 (0) 203 770 7909

Woolf Thomson Jones
[email protected]
+44 (0) 7376 392 693

Notes to Editors

About HelloDone

HelloDone is a B2B2C white label automated conversation platform that allows transport, utilities and home delivery companies to deliver better customer engagement while reducing costs and improving revenues. The HelloDone platform opens up today’s customers’ messaging channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Slack, to meaningful and rich engagement with businesses.

The company has been developed by Ed Hodges and Pete Shannon, two consumer tech entrepreneurs with significant experience in delivering tech-driven solutions to solve daily customer needs.

About Finance Birmingham

Hello Done received £1.3m of funding during 2019 from the Rail Supply Growth Fund which provides flexible packages of funding to businesses that offer services and products that operate in or cross over into the rail sector. The Fund is managed by Finance Birmingham and funded by central Government.

About Telefonica

At Wayra UK, we democratise entrepreneurship. We do this by providing unparalleled access to networks and capital that turn start-ups into scale-ups while ensuring that our cohorts reflect the diversity of the UK and, indeed, the world. Our 190 portfolio companies have a combined value of near $1bn and have had 136 trials with Telefónica, generating $18m in revenue for our portfolio of start-ups.

Add to this a further 7 programmes that have supported 94 start-ups in 6 cities throughout the UK, and it becomes clear why it is said that Wayra UK is Great Britain’s only truly national innovation programme. We bring world-class start-ups not only to Telefónica globally and O2 locally but also to our network of partners, including Cisco, Novartis, Ferrovial, Hyundai, Bosch, Innogy, Network Rail and the British Government via the GCHQ and NCSC. In each case, our primary aim is to find new sources of revenue and/or innovation.

We are part of the larger Wayra network.  At Wayra, we scale start-ups. We offer start-ups access not only to investment but also to business development opportunities with some of the world’s largest companies, including our parent company, Telefónica. Wayra operates in 10 countries, mostly in Latin America (i.e., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela) and Europe (i.e., Germany, Spain and the UK).  This makes us one of the world’s most global, connected and technological innovation hubs.