Vancouver startup Withe has joined the first cohort of ODX, On Deck‘s venture accelerator.
Founded by Daniel Shalinsky, Liam Ross, and Shayne Gelbard, Withe lets sales teams video chat with customers on-demand, right from their website. Their software helps you build face-to-face relationships, capture the moment of interest, and demo products live. Withe is built for DTC ecommerce brands and SaaS companies.
ODX is On Deck’s $150+ million global venture capital fund and accelerator backed by top investors and operators from around the globe. Withe was one of 120 companies in the program’s inaugural cohort, selected from 7,800+ applicants from around the world, and will receive an investment of USD $125,000 for 7% from On Deck.
“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been backed by ODX! When we heard about the launch of ODX by On Deck, an organization that has quickly built a competitive advantage by focusing on human connection, we knew they’d be the right partner to help us in our mission,” wrote the c0-founders regarding the announcement.
Withe’s co-founders are building Withe because they believe that video chat will transform the way we make important purchases online. And their timing is great.
If the past two years taught us anything, it’s that our most important relationships can not only survive, but thrive online with the right tools in place. Video chat has been the anchor for building and maintaining these relationships, evolving from ‘optional’ to ‘necessary’ for most of our one-to-one interactions.
Despite existing for years, improvements to video chat technology and widespread behaviour change quietly turned video chat into one of the fastest-adopted technologies in history, skyrocketed from 19 per cent to 81 per cent adoption in under 18 months during the pandemic.
This is something I feel my business would really benefit from and makes it even better that it’s a local company from Vancouver 🙂