Special Events Platform Carats & Cake Raises $10.6M

Carats & Cake, a financial operating system for the events industry, has raised $10.6 million in Series A funding.

“With this latest financing, we plan to thoughtfully build out our product, engineering, and sales teams as we continue to support properties with purpose-built tools,” founder and CEO Jess Conroy said in a news release Thursday (Sept. 22).

“We seek to be the partner of choice for the digital transformation of the events industry and we have the investor support to make that a reality.”

The funding round, led by 1Sharpe Ventures, brings the New York-based company’s total equity raised to $19.9 million with an added debt facility of $10 million, the release said.

Founded in 2013, Carats & Cake bills itself as a source for “marketing and discovery for event businesses” that has since evolved to include a range of venue and property groups’ event sales, such as invoicing, financing and contracting.

Read more: Event Cos. Brace for Burst of Business as Weddings Hit 20-Year High

“The company’s solutions connect the customer journey from venue discovery to actually paying for an event,” the release said, acting as “a necessary solution for venues that complements CRM and POS solutions already in use on the hotel booking side of the business, which are commonly run entirely separately.”

Gregor Watson, the co-founder of 1Sharpe Ventures, noted that Carats & Cakes is operating in the wake of a post-pandemic wedding boom in a $100 billion industry.

PYMNTS explored that boom earlier this year in our conversation with Andy Ivanovich, chief financial officer at The Knot Worldwide, who predicted “a season for the ages, for sure.”

The Knot, which says 80% of couples getting married register on its site, said its internal numbers indicated 2.6 million weddings in the U.S. in 2022.

“You have weddings from 2020 that got postponed into ’21 and ’22, plus you have this resurgence of demand and, frankly, excitement from people to get back together and celebrate fun things,” Ivanovich said.