BizProLink Network, a network of industry-specific communities for business professionals, Wednesday announced it has secured an additional $3.2 million in Series C funding, led by venture capital from CrossBow Ventures Inc.
This funding follows BizProLink Network’s recent move into the Private Label space, partnering with AOL’s Netscape Netbusiness Center to provide industry-specific content and online tools for its “Communities” section.
BizProLink’s “Private Label” program allows mid-sized and large organizations to offer their customers ready-made access to a variety of industry-specific content and communities. Each of BizProLink’s 135 customizable communities serves as a business professional’s daily home page, providing over 90 business tools to help companies achieve their sales and profitability goals. Over 40 corporations use BizProLink industry communities as a targeted sales and marketing channel.
“The only way to drive users to a large corporate site is to bring them in with services they use already,” BizProLink CEO Steven Sponder told InternetNews. “This seems to be the only solution that hasn’t been tried yet.”
BizProLink is also able to “cross-pollenate” between communities, matching traits that include users’ occupation and business interests to an advertiser’s key target market, he said.
In addition to providing vertical ASP services to businesses, BizProLink provides emerging ASP companies with infrastructure services, including personalization technology, customer relationship management tools, back-end integration and managed web hosting. In addition, the company plans to announce its online billing, electronic bill payment and presentment solutions.
BizProLink, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was initially funded in January and November of 2000 by American and Swiss venture capital investors and technology companies, which included Siebel Systems. With this latest infusion of capital, the company will focus on the continued expansion of its sales initiatives and development and enhancement of its partner relationships.
