Why Loyalty is the Next Big Infrastructure Play (And Why We Doubled Down on Benji)

Why We Backed Benji
Most brands want loyalty partnerships. Almost none have the infrastructure to launch them fast.

Loyalty is one of the fastest-growing parts of the consumer economy, yet it still runs on custom deals and manual integrations, with engineering timelines that can stretch a year or more. Benji is building the modern tooling that lets brands act on that pain point with speed and ease.

We're proud to have participated in the company's $6.25 million seed round alongside lead investors Preface Ventures and Atinc, and co-investors M25 and Hyde Park Venture Partners.

The opportunity

Loyalty programs have grown into a massive economy in their own right. For most brands, launching a loyalty program requires months of negotiation, seven-figure budgets and custom builds. These partnerships have traditionally only been accessible to the biggest players, and even then they'd have to build them in a piecemeal way. With Benji, brands can plug into a growing network of loyalty programs across travel, retail and hospitality via a single API. What once took months can now launch in days.

Why loyalty infrastructure matters

We back software that saves time and moves money. Benji does both. Loyalty points are financial assets; they sit on balance sheets and represent tangible value for the brands that issue them and the consumers who earn them. The CFPB estimates Americans hold more than $33 billion in unredeemed credit card rewards. As loyalty moves from marketing to a financial and operational layer of commerce, making that happen more quickly and cheaply becomes a competitive advantage for brands.

Loyalty increasingly sits at the center of how brands acquire and grow their customer base. Consumer expectations have evolved; Deloitte recently found that four in five consumers value flexibility in how rewards are earned and redeemed. Most of today's loyalty experiences are clunky and confined to a specific brand's ecosystem. When a market outgrows its plumbing, someone has to build new pipes. We've seen it happen in payments and we think loyalty is next.

Nick Anastasiades, Jon Elron and Arik Gaisler, Benji's co-founders, have done this before. When we first invested in Benji last year, we highlighted our deep conviction in this team, having previously backed them at 2ndKitchen, which connected local restaurants to hotels, bars and venues that wanted to offer food service without building a kitchen. Convincing disparate brands to work together is a skill they know well.

Congratulations to the Benji team on the raise. We're excited to see where they take it.