Belly was founded in August 2011 in Chicago by Logan LaHive and Craig Ulliott, receiving its initial round of around $3M in funding from Chicago-based

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm

Lightbank Lightbank is a financial organization that specializes in making venture capital investments in "disruptive" technology companies in the United States including seed investments, Series A round and late-stage investments. It combines investment ...

. Belly provides a

loyalty program A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and ...

for merchants, using an in-store iPad for the merchant and an app for customers. It charges merchants $50 to $100 a month for the service, which includes an iPad, a case and lock for the iPad, marketing materials, plus data and analytics. Customers earn loyalty points by checking in at the store with a

QR code A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about th ...

technology to earn points that could be redeemed as a merchant chose.Tricia Duryee
Four Reasons Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing $10 Million in Belly
AllThingsD, May 8, 2012

History

By May 2012, Belly had signed up around 1,400 merchants and was available in Chicago, Austin, Milwaukee, Madison, Wis., Washington D.C., Phoenix, New York and Boston, and had around 200,000 active users. At that time it received an additional $10M in funding from

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

and

Silicon Valley Bank Silicon Valley Bank is an American commercial bank. SVB is on the list of largest banks in the United States, and is the biggest bank in Silicon Valley based on local deposits. It is a subsidiary of SVB Financial Group. History Silicon Valley Ba ...

.Lenna Rao
Customer Loyalty And Rewards Platform For Local Businesses Belly Raises $10M From Andreessen Horowitz

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

. May 8, 2012. In September 2012, Belly was included as a launch partner in

Apple Wallet Apple Wallet, or simply Wallet and formerly known as Passbook, is a digital wallet developed by Apple Inc. and included with iOS and watchOS that allows users to store Wallet passes such as coupons, boarding passes, student ID cards, government I ...

. By September 2013, Belly was integrated into

Google Wallet Google Wallet (or simply Wallet) is a digital wallet platform developed by Google. It is available for the Android, Wear OS, and Fitbit OS operating systems, and was announced on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. It began rollin ...

. In August 2013, Belly received a Series B-1 round of funding of $12.1M led by

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...

DAG Ventures DAG Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. DAG Ventures works with startups in providing early stage and growth stage funding. Since its founding in 2004, by Tom Goodrich and John Cadeddu, the firm has backed ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, and 7-Ventures, a subsidiary of

7-Eleven 7-Eleven, Inc., stylized as 7-ELEVE, is a multinational chain of retail convenience stores, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The chain was founded in 1927 as an ice house storefront in Dallas. It was named Tote'm Stores between 1928 and 1946. A ...

. In June 2014, Belly announced international expansion, starting in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. In August 2014,

rolled out the Belly rewards program in 2,600 locations. However,

discontinued the Belly program on November 30, 2016, In November 2016, Logan LaHive stepped down as CEO of Belly and was succeeded by COO Dan Gloede. In November 2018, the Belly product line assets were acquired from Hatch Loyalty by Mobivity Holdings Corp.

References

External links

Official WebsiteLoyalty Agency
{{Authority control Customer loyalty programs Companies based in Chicago American companies established in 2011 Customer loyalty programs in Canada

History

References

Further reading

External links