Givsly is raising capital via a Crowd SAFE at a $10 million valuation with a 20% discount. This valuation is reasonable for this company. While Givsly is still in a relatively early stage, the company did bring in more than $1.2 million in revenue last year, yielding a revenue-to-valuation multiple of 8.3x. That’s maybe a tad too high for a relatively unproven software product in a competitive market, but the 20% discount makes the valuation more palatable. All in all, this is a fairly priced investment opportunity.

It’s difficult to indicate an exact relevant market aligned with the use case for Givsly. The company points to the marketing software market as its target, but that’s unrealistically broad. The North American marketing software market is large and growing, at $24.9 billion in 2021 and with a rapid 19.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the next several years. However, it has little to do with Givsly. The marketing software landscape includes tools for email marketing, website building, social media monitoring, and much more. Each of those tools forms the vital architecture of marketing activities, whereas Givsly is primarily an add-on layer on top of that foundational technology. Therefore, Givsly’s addressable market is really only a tiny fraction of the marketing software market. 

Givsly could be more accurately grouped with corporate social responsibility software. The United States market for those solutions was valued at $150 million in 2019, with a decent CAGR of 7% from 2018 to 2025. Clearly, this market is significantly more niche than the broader marketing software market, but it more accurately captures how much money companies would be looking to spend on Givsly. 

Givsly doesn’t have a massive addressable market. While that doesn’t sound promising, there is reason to be optimistic. A very large number of businesses could theoretically be Givsly buyers, so the company has far-reaching potential to become a more integral part of the marketing and social impact tech stack. If Givsly is successful, it could construct its own emerging market category around this type of tool.

Givsly is led by Chad Hickey, an experienced sales professional who sought to combine his corporate sales experience with social impact. Hickey has more than 17 years of experience with advertising technology and sales. He worked his way up from a junior account executive at a digital media firm to become the chief revenue officer (CRO) of GroundTruth (formerly xAd), a location-based ad company. Along the way, Hickey grew his expertise at the intersection of sales and marketing, and he recognized that social impact has the potential to improve business outcomes while also making a difference.

The other three members of the Givsly leadership team have all worked with Hickey for at least five years. Two of three previously worked at GroundTruth, where Hickey served as CRO. Co-founder and Head of Experience Partnerships Susan Grace most recently worked at GroundTruth before her Givsly journey. She is an events management professional with more than a decade of event management experience that culminated in a role as events marketing manager at GroundTruth. She has worked with Hickey for six years.

Givsly co-founder and Head of Product Lotta Lautsuo is the only leadership team member that didn’t come from GroundSocial (though she’s reportedly been connected with Hickey for more than 16 years). She is a deeply experienced operator and go-to-market leader with almost 30 years of experience in wide-ranging operational, business development, and product marketing roles with various companies. 

Head of Engineering Stephen Anderson is a longtime entrepreneur and engineer who also worked at GroundTruth with Hickey. He has launched various entrepreneurial ventures throughout the last 20 years. Anderson has corporate experience from roles as chief architect at Nokia and vice president of engineering at GroundTruth. He has worked with Hickey for five years.

Givsly’s leadership team is well-rounded and impressively experienced, with strong backgrounds at the intersection of sales and marketing. Hickey’s long associations with all the team members also suggests strong team work, which should help the company run more smoothly. Overall, Givsly’s team is sufficiently large, diverse, and experienced. 

Frankly, it’s a bit difficult to understand exactly what Givsly’s software does. The company doesn’t provide ample details on how its software works. But there are two clear use cases (among possibly several others that are less clear). Sales professionals can invite prospects to book calls via a Givsly booking link, which will then automatically make a donation to a charity. Marketing teams can also integrate Givsly into their paid media programs to spark donations when users interact with an ad. 

These use cases appear to be unique, as does Givsly’s overall thesis of integrating small donation opportunities alongside regular sales and marketing activities. There are many other companies that allow nonprofits to raise money, and others allow corporations to manage their corporate social responsibility programs. But few take this specific approach to incentivizing charitable behavior through things like booking and ad conversions. 

However, while Givsly’s concept is different from what appears to exist on the market, the company does not have strong defensibility. Its software solutions seem to be relatively straightforward. Givsly doesn’t seem to have any compelling intellectual property, patents, or other competitive advantage that prevents competitors from offering similar tools. Givsly will need to find ways to build a wide competitive moat in order to secure its differentiation.

Givsly has achieved strong annual revenue growth over the last two years. In 2020, the company brought in $412,929 in revenue. That figure leapt to $1.2 million in 2021. Givsly is also managing expenses carefully. Between 2020 and 2021, the company slimmed down its net loss from $188,773 to just $26,956. And growth looks set to continue this year. Givsly reports that it already booked more than 85% of 2021 revenue by April 2022. This strong financial performance is driven by growing client numbers and a growing number of clients who use more than one Givsly product. Interest in multi-product usage led Givsly to introduce an annual subscription model this year.

In addition, Givsly has successfully won over a number of large, brand-name clients. Companies like Meta, Yahoo, Twitter, Fox Corporation, Paramount, and several more are Givsly clients (though it’s unclear which products they use and what their use cases are). Givsly’s revenue model appears to be focused on enterprise clients at the moment. The company has an opportunity to scale more quickly if it can draw a large number of smaller clients. 

Beyond client and revenue growth, Givsly has achieved several other milestones of success. The company has partnered with more than 70 nonprofits so that clients can support a wide selection of causes. Additionally, Givsly has already raised $691,500 to fund the development of its current software platform. Founder Chad Hickey was named one of Causeartist’s 40 Social Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2021, and Givsly was recognized by Fast Company as a 2021 World Changing Idea. 

Overall, Givsly’s financials are strong, and the company has attracted significant interest from partners and big-name clients. 

There aren’t any particularly pressing risk factors surrounding this investment opportunity. Givsly does have a bit of long-term debt on its balance sheet at $753,147, but it’s not an amount that raises strong alarms. Overall, this appears to be a stable company with a strong team that is experiencing solid growth.

Givsly has an admirable mission and has clearly already won over several enterprise clients who endorse the vision of blended profit and purpose. However, Givsly needs to work on its product positioning and ability to market to smaller clients. At present, it’s difficult to understand what Givsly’s software actually does. This issue can be remedied with long sales processes for enterprise clients, but it limits Givsly’s ability to scale with a large number of clients. Rapidly establishing a core market and building customer loyalty will be particularly important given Givsly’s relative lack of competitive moat. All in all, Givsly seems like the kind of platform that could emulate mainstream business-to-business, software-as-a-service tools like Mailchimp or Webflow. But first, it will need to better articulate a value proposition.

Givsly is taking advantage of positive societal tailwinds to build a product with genuine purpose. Customers are more socially conscious than ever, and they demand social and environmental accountability from the brands they love. Likewise, employees are more likely to feel empowered by social impact programs that align their sense of personal fulfillment with their work lives. Givsly offers a simple solution for companies looking to integrate charitable giving into their day-to-day sales and marketing activities. 

Clearly, companies agree. Givsly has successfully signed a number of major enterprise clients, including Meta, Fox, Paramount, Twitter, Yahoo, and several more. Those clients have driven strong year-over-year revenue growth for Givsly, and the company is hovering close to profitability. Givsly plans to grow its product offerings to include more support for live event giving and other innovative use cases. This growth could further expand its contracts with current clients and drive more clients looking to improve their business outcomes by promoting social good.

Givsly is a software tool allowing companies to integrate social giving into their sales and marketing activities. Businesses can embrace actions such as planting a tree when a prospect signs up for a sales demo or donating to a food bank when someone clicks on a company’s Facebook ad. It will be important for Givsly to further refine its product positioning, establish a firm competitive advantage, and expand its use cases, particularly to scale to a larger number of corporate clients. While the company’s solution is innovative, it is also rather simple. Establishing a competitive advantage should be top priority. 

However, Givsly’s solution is unique, and it is clearly compelling for corporations. Brands like Meta, Fox, Twitter, and more have already signed on, driving strong year-over-year revenue growth for Givsly. Givsly is growing efficiently with reasonable expenses, and it is led by a seasoned leadership team. There’s good reason to believe that Givsly can maintain and expand its operations while establishing better defensibility. Given its performance, Givsly’s current valuation is also a fair deal for investors. Therefore, Givsly has been rated a Deal to Watch. 

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd analyst report or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com. 

Analysis written on May 27, 2022.