Benjamin Capital Companions has acquired augmented actuality agency New Factor Co. to spice up “money moments.”
Benjamin Capital Companions, primarily based in New York and Oulu, Finland, hopes the deal will gas the following stage of progress in its mission to disrupt the fast-growing client money rewards market. The worth was not disclosed, however Benjamin referred to the as a “talent acquisition.”
Austin, Texas-based New Factor Co. creates buyer experiences on behalf of brand name entrepreneurs, that includes its proprietary augmented actuality rewards device and expertise. In the meantime, the Benjamin app has amassed multiple million customers month-to-month lively customers, up from 150,000 in March, mentioned Erno Tauriainen, chief product officer, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“They created AR technology, which is kind of like Pokémon Go, but with real money. So you open the camera at the location, and then you see the reality, what we call our money moments. Then you can grab the rewards,” Tauriainen mentioned. “They’re user experience experts. We are implementing their AR technology on our platform. We can notify users at a location, like a Starbucks, that we have an offer for them.”
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This device shall be built-in into the fast-growing Benjamin app that permits shoppers to generate money rewards — known as Benjamin Cash Moments — on a broad vary of on a regular basis actions together with purchases, cell gaming, and viewing adverts.
“Our vision is for Benjamin to be the facilitator of a comprehensive cash rewards lifestyle across the full range of commercial brands and entities with which consumers interact on a daily basis from groceries to
gas to going out to eat.” mentioned Tauriainen. “The Benjamin wallet will be the catalyst for a series of ‘Benjamin Money Moments’ for consumers as they go throughout the course of their days.”
As a part of the deal, New Factor cofounders Aubrey Johnson, CEO, and Jason Bender, CTO, will assume management roles in product improvement and engineering as EVP Product Technique and EVP Know-how, respectively. Each shall be reporting into Tauriainen, a 15-year veteran of the money rewards area.
“I’m pleased and excited to announce our acquisition of New Thing Co.,” mentioned Tauriainen, in an announcement. “By bringing Jason and Aubrey on board, we’re not only adding top-tier talent with unparalleled experience in cash-back and user engagement, but we’re also gaining cutting-edge AR technology that will revolutionize how consumers interact with brands, merchants, and games.”
Johnson and Bender are identified for having constructed Dosh, a number one cash-back platform that was acquired
by Cardlytics for $275 million.
“What Aubrey and Jason were building and had built with Dosh was a world class user experience,” Tauriainen mentioned.
“We are honored and thrilled to join the Benjamin team as they continue to have incredible success in the
consumer rewards space,” mentioned Johnson, in an announcement. “At Dosh, we built a premier cash rewards engine whose success was a function of creating a world-class user experience, supported by sophisticated technology. We are eager to apply this expertise to this company’s mission to put one or more Benjamins in every user’s wallet every single month.”
This acquisition coincides with a $13 million capital increase, together with each debt and fairness, from present
traders Play Ventures and Huge Bets VC. This fundraising was orchestrated by revered business veteran Jordan Rohan, who joined Benjamin over the summer time as its chief monetary officer.
“We are delighted to have the continued support of our visionary investors. The financing has enabled
Benjamin to scale its user base past a million monthly active users,” mentioned Rohan, in an announcement. “This capital will also drive our expansion into exciting new verticals including commerce, payments, advertising and more.”
Origins
Tauriainen migrated to the U.S. in 2010, having grown up in Finland in a household retail enterprise. Within the U.S., he wished to start out one thing associated to banking knowledge as a part of his American dream. He constructed a few startups that grounded him in money rewards. The second enterprise, Spent, (began in 2014) let folks report and monitor their bills. He created an app that he hoped can be higher than Expensify. However the factor that took off with customers had been the particular gives for affiliate hyperlinks subsequent to the expense numbers.
Since popping out of beta in October 2023, the Benjamin app already has over a million downloads.
Income progress has additionally been very strong and is approaching $4 million MRR in September, up from $1 million in Could.
“We’ on a mission. We’re obsessed with this notion of putting one or more Benjamins in every user’s pocket every single month. That’s why we exist,” Tauriainen mentioned.
The Benjamin app permits shoppers to generate money rewards – known as Benjamin Cash Moments – on a broad vary of on a regular basis actions together with purchases, cell gaming, and viewing adverts. You possibly can earn money rewards by finishing day by day duties in cell video games.
This versatility permits Benjamin to up the ante to compete towards different established gamers within the cashback enviornment.
Concentrate on video games
Throughout current months, the corporate has began to spice up its gaming mission, working with third social gathering distributors who present the corporate with video games. Tauriainen mentioned the corporate has been working with extra third-party aggregators in addition to first-party sport studios.
“They like us because we drive a lot of very high quality gamers who use the money moments,” he mentioned. “That’s a tremendous development. The users love the app and go back on a daily basis.”
The players can do actions in video games akin to downloading or enjoying to reap rewards from the Benjamin app. Typically talking, these are hypercasual video games. However all manufacturers have among the similar issues now.
“In this age of increased privacy, with the entire regulatory apparatus starting to push back on micro targeting, third party cookies have been marginalized. Now, every marketer is looking for a way to get consumers to look at a brand and engage with a brand,” Tauriainen mentioned.
For sport corporations, entrepreneurs will be pretty exact with their objectives. They may provide a reward after somebody downloads a sport, completes the primary chapter, completes the third chapter, completed the sport, or shares their outcomes on social media. They will get the gamers to go “deeper and deeper” into the video games, Tauriainen mentioned. On high of that, they will layer in loyalty packages as properly.
“We show them the money moment opportunities where they can earn more,” Tauriainen mentioned. “It’s very heavily gamified like this.”
One of many advantages of working straight with the sport corporations and types is that Benjamin can then arrange and oversee the consumer expertise. And that has rather a lot to do with the acquisition of New Factor Co., which has experience in consumer expertise.
“What we see with the Benjamin wallet is a massive opportunity going forward where the Benjamin wallet actually can become way to pay,” mentioned Tauriainen. “We motivate people to earn items for the wallet.”
Benjamin has about 60 or 70 folks throughout completely different places. The intention is to assist corporations with attain to not simply eyeballs however to engagement and the power to monetize it.
“That’s what Madison Avenue is looking for,” Tauriainen mentioned.