LoDo's Closely sees 2013 as a big revenue growth year

Founded in 2009, digital marketing toolmaker Closely is now 12 employees strong, and CEO Perry Evans anticipates bringing on two to three new people in 2013. 

 

"We should be going from a few hundred thousand to about $3 million in revenue," he says. Partnerships with large marketing companies is the prime driver of the revenue growth, and the revenue is largely guaranteed, Evans adds.

 

The Closely Platform "is really about creating action from promotion," Evans says.

It allows a small business to manage all of their offers and promotions from one simple dashboard.

 

Evans says small businesses are "overwhelmed by the noise" of the social-media universe. Closely's new free Perch app helps by consolidating social feeds and daily deals of competitors and peers "to help businesses know what's going on in their business neighborhood," says Evans. "We bring it together in one app instead of spending an hour or more surfing the Internet." 

 

Perch, which has garnered about 5,000 downloads since its October release, will remain free and act as an introduction to Closely's paid digital-marketing platform.

"It's a brand new product and a brand new category," says Evans. "We're pretty happy."

 

Evans is one of the long-timers in the Denver startup scene.

 

"There's a real excitement about creating a real community in Denver," he says. "That's been overshadowed by Boulder. The key question is how we can anchor a significant venture fund in Denver? Boulder has the advantage of Foundry as an anchor."