Previously known as BLACKBX, Stampede provides offline businesses online tools to help them connect with customers and grow faster. This replaces wasteful physical promotions and advertising.

The funding will allow Stampede to grow its team, expand its sales remit and continue developing its suite of services.

Stampede’s flagship product, a Wi-Fi-based customer engagement and marketing analytics tool, is currently used by over 800 venues. The new funding will allow the company to expand in the UK and internationally.

Stampede will be growing its team from 32 to 60 employees with the specific goal of contacting every pub, bar, restaurant, café, hotel and shop in the UK over the next 12 months – 530,000 businesses in total.

Patrick Clover, Stampede founder and CEO, said: “Stampede is the best friend of every pub, restaurant and hotel owner. Our mission is to give small businesses the same tools as their online counterparts. This will provide a level of customer insight and marketing automation previously only available to large brands with large marketing budgets and complex digital tools. We are called Stampede because we want to grow customer numbers for our users fast, but this growth isn’t limited to our customers. Stampede is growing rapidly which is only going to be accelerated by this recent injection of funding.”

Mark Hogarth, partner at Techstart Ventures, added: “Techstart only invests in the most ambitious tech start-ups and founders, a description that suits Stampede and Patrick well. We were initially drawn to Stampede by the scale of Patrick’s vision and the company’s already impressive ability to deliver digital marketing capabilities to operators of physical venues. We’re excited to be part of this seed round and look forward to supporting Patrick and his team as they deliver the next stage of Stampede’s growth.”