PeopleLinx receives $3.5 million; does the town at Dreamforce

Tom Paine

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PeopleLinx, the Philadelphia-based social selling app, received a new round of $3.5 million in late August from Osage Venture Partners, MissionOG and Greycoft Partners. The investment, all from returning investors, demonstrates their contnuesd confidence in PeopleLinx' future in spite of some reports suggesting it was in disarry in terms of personnel. The funds will be used to build up product development, including adding developers to replace an outsurcing arrangement with Arcweb. PeopleLinx has now raised over $8 million.

PeopleLinx, which last year moved to the Salesforce platform, is busy at Dreamforce again this year, giving previews of its new PeopleLinx 4 platform (release date unknown), and doing a demo with marketing officials from customers Red Hat and the Sacremento Kings. The Kings are of interest since like so many West Coast franchises they are now owned by a tech titan, Vivek Ranadive, who sold his software firm TIBCO to private equity for about $4 billion. Like many of the new breed of owners, Ranadive is trying to tranform the Kings through technology, and PeopleLinx is part of the solution, not to improve the bssketball team, but to build relationships with season ticket holders and add more. PeopleLinx should next try selling Hasso Plattner, Larry Ellison (no, not a Salesforce product), Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer.

Chief Marketing Officer Dr. Michael Idinopulous (always have to check spelling of his last name) refused to say much about PeopleLinx 4, except that it would feature a compelling user interface (he hinted at video), and would integrate more SaaS offerings and more information sources.

PeopleLinx has hopes that everyone attending Dreamforce will sign up for its Share the Dream app, which enables you to customize your Dreamforce Experience.

Ever wonder how the TastyKakes PeopleLinx serves at Dreamforce arrive there so fresh? A batch of that incredible concoction that only Philly could dream up is flown there by air prior to the event. By the way, I've often wondered if Tasty Baking made a good decsion to implement SAP prior to its bankruptcy. Just seemed too big, too complex, too expensive for a relatively small company. But I've
never heard a post-mortem on that one. Of course, now its part of Flowers Foods, a much larger and more sophisticated business.