With a third-place finish at the Banff Venture Forum "First Look Showcase", Victoria-based startup TicTalking put its next-generation customer engagement software on the map of major venture capitalists from across North America.

VICTORIA, Oct. 4, 2013 /CNW/ - "TicTalking is a solution for passionate brands that want to engage their passionate fans," explained CEO Peter Nieforth. "Our technology drives engagement, and delivers meaningful data about customer interests. Presenting to top VCs at the Banff Venture Forum opened a door for us to start developing our next round of financing to aggressively grow our company and revenues."

With leading venture capitalists including: Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital Management (co-founding partner of Mithril is Peter Thiel); Rahul Sood, General Manager & Partner Microsoft Ventures; and Keith Brown of IBM Venture Capital Group, the Banff Venture Forum is the place to be for startups like TicTalking, and a third-place finish in the showcase puts the company on the radar of VCs across the globe.

Greg Smith, Managing Partner of Espresso Capital was one of the judges in the 'First Look Showcase'. He was impressed with TicTalking's move into the B2B2C market, and sees the potential in the company.

"TicTalking is developing a unique niche for itself by providing a platform for corporate brands to develop their own customer communities, and profiling customer interests in the conversations," said Smith. "It's a one-stop shop for outcome-driven engagement, and I see a billion dollar opportunity for someone to get it right."

TicTalking's platform provides a conversation forum for people to engage with each other and with brand advocates for their favourite companies, artists, or brands.

Unlike the current forum format that has remained largely unchanged for more than a decade, TicTalking's product is visually dynamic, and its customizable features allow companies to more-deeply engage with its customers.

TicTalking's technology includes patented intelligent recommendation engines, giving users better content recommendations, and the company engaging in the conversations gets richer data and analysis in order to meet outcome-based goals.

"Many companies aren't engaging their customers at all, and of the companies who do, many are sending that engagement 'offsite' to a social network or other forum site," Nieforth explained. "With TicTalking deployed as a white-label solution on your own site, you keep your customers in-house, and you own their data and the analysis of it."

The Banff Venture Forum is the premier company-financing event in Canada. It showcases early and growth stage companies in two streams: Information Technology and Energy & Environmental Technology. Approximately 35 companies presented to investors from across North America with the intention of securing the investment required to grow their businesses.

The Forum is designed to showcase the hottest hi-tech companies, offer insight into key issues within the industry, provide a premium networking opportunity and give companies a chance to learn from world-class professionals in the investment community.

SOURCE: TicTalking.com

Peter Nieforth, CEO
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