Our Thinking
Creator Economy: State of the Market – Fall 2023
The Creator Economy encompasses 200 to 300 million individual creators, including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers who produce UGC for social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. This report maps the Creator Economy ecosystem, analyzes M&A and investment activity, and compiles key themes we are watching, with a focus on three subsectors – Creator Tools, Monetization of Content, and Creator Infrastructure.
The Upcoming Influencer Marketing Consolidation Wave
We believe the acquisition of Tagger by Sprout Social represents a turning point in the upcoming consolidation wave across the Influencer Marketing landscape. Recently, many companies in the space have been focused on the consistency of their growth trajectories as well as turbulent private capital markets. As a result, we believe there is inherent pent-up acquisition demand that will accelerate into 2024.
Market Briefing: Influencer Marketing: 1H 2023 M&A Update
Adoption of Influencer Marketing strategies continues to increase. Our latest market brief covers M&A activity for the first half of 2023. Recently, many companies in the space have been focused on the consistency of their growth trajectories and turbulent private capital markets. As a result, we believe there is inherent pent-up acquisition demand that will accelerate into 2024.
Wellness Technology: State of the Market – 2023
Nfluence closely monitors the ever-evolving landscape of Wellness Technology, tracking over 900+ companies in multiple market landscapes. Despite challenging economic conditions, our State of the Market report highlights the remarkable growth in capital investment, an all-time high in M&A activity, and details key themes we are watching in 2023.
Customer Data Platform: State of the Market – 2023
Nfluence continues to witness continued strong Customer Data Platform industry growth, as AI is increasingly being leveraged to enhance core CDP capabilities and companies leverage M&A to expand core functionality and capabilities both upstream and downstream. We examine key themes and review M&A transactions and capital raises across the broader CDP landscape to depict the trends and valuation movements in the space.
Finding the Right Funding Solution
It is a tough time for many private companies looking to raise capital. With both growth equity and flexible senior lending now in short supply, many companies are facing stark choices, including raising capital at an undesirable valuation, accepting a down round, or cutting their burn and reining in their growth ambitions. Fortunately, there are options beyond growth equity and senior debt. Structured equity or growth debt, or a combination of the two, provides firms with a way to secure the financing they need to grow their businesses throughout the economic cycle.
Consumer Technology: State of the Market – H1 2023
The worst of the pandemic might be over in most parts of the world, but the Consumer Technology industry continues to face a number of challenging hurdles. With supply chain disruptions the dominant challenge for the last two years, now the bigger worry is shrinking demand and high inflation. We have compiled an analysis of public comparables, capital raises, and M&A transactions across the broader Consumer Technology landscape to depict the trends and valuation movements in the space.
Market Briefing: Influencer Marketing 2023 State of the Market
Adoption of Influencer Marketing strategies continue to increase. Our latest market brief covers key themes we are watching, total capital invested/deal count, M&A activity and competitive analysis of the influencer ecosystem.
Key Takeaways—How is the Metaverse Being Built?
In the fourth event in our Media and Music Salon Series — “How is the Metaverse Being Built?” — we curated a group of leaders in the media, technology, and music industries to share their thoughts on the evolving landscape of the Metaverse. Based on the group’s discussion and our own insights, we’ve compiled six key takeaways to consider as the Metaverse evolves.
The Summer of our Discontent?
The summer heat is in full swing, but market uncertainty may leave parts of the private capital markets in a persistent cooldown until later this year. As valuations recalibrate and dealmaking slows, comparisons have been drawn to the prior economic volatility of 2020, 2008, and even 2000 — but there are some key differences here.
CX/CE Platforms Address Employee Engagement Issues Caused by The Great Resignation, Investors Take Note
The trickle-down effects caused by worker shortages have been top of mind since COVID sent much of the workforce home, but the issues underpinning the “big quit” were brewing long before the pandemic. As a result, a focus on employee engagement has emerged as a strong trend in 2022, and CX/CE companies are deploying solutions to help employers attract more qualified candidates while keeping their existing employees happy.
Customer Experience & Engagement Nsights Map 2022
With the wave of accelerated digitalization prompted by the pandemic, companies of all sizes are implementing creative tactics to keep consumers engaged. Brick-and-mortar businesses have shifted focus to digital interface personalization and streamlined omnichannel offerings, while digitally-native companies have leveraged state-of-the-art customer experience technologies, more user-friendly platforms, and enhanced personalized communications efforts. To depict the evolution of market focus and innovation, our team has mapped out the customer experience and engagement industry in our 2022 CE CX Nsights Map.
Recent News
Preparing Your Company for an M&A Exit
Nfluence Partners Managing Director John Sternfield was a special guest on Preparing Your Company for an M&A Exit, What Entrepreneurs Need to Know. John and fellow panelists Conrad Everhard and Leonard T. Nuara discussed the process of preparing your company to be acquired, the process that a company goes through during a sale process and shared their recommendations on achieving successful outcomes.
Recent Transactions
Allseated is an innovative, award-winning company, leading space visualization and collaboration through immersive experiences.
