{"data":{"type":"company_profile","id":98975,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:98975","attributes":{"canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake","generated_at":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","updated_at":"2026-06-22T05:03:25Z","entity_ids":{"company":"wefunder:company:98975","slug":"wefunder:company_slug:rake"},"profile_visibility":{"owner_published":true,"public_search_results":true,"site_search_listed":true,"privacy_mode":"promote","invite_only":false},"provenance":{"source":"wefunder_public_company_profile","as_of":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","claims":{"total_amount_raised":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#amount_raised","last_verified_at":"2026-06-22T05:03:25Z","as_of":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","confidence":"high"},"total_investors":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#number_of_investors","last_verified_at":"2026-06-22T05:03:25Z","as_of":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","confidence":"high"},"active_raise_states":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","confidence":"high"},"latest_fundraise_state":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil).order(funding_started_at)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-22T17:52:54Z","confidence":"medium"}}},"company":{"id":98975,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:98975","slug":"rake","name":"Rake","tagline":"Rake is a universal messaging platform for enterprises to small businesses. ","elevator_pitch":"We provide messaging technology for enterprises and more. In one workspace, we deliver team channel chat and omnichannel customer chat. We are the only platform that allows users using their messaging application of choice to fully participate in a conversation channel with other people using their messaging application of choice.","story":"As collaboration tools and social platforms mature, organizations have increasingly embraced omnichannel communication for internal collaboration and sales/marketing growth strategies. Because omnichannel adoption in a typical organization evolves slowly, organizations often adopt it in stages, and decisions regarding vendors to support various channel integrations do\u0026nbsp;not always take overlap into account. As a result, there are often multiple vendors in place\u0026nbsp;to support messaging. With multiple vendors come multiple apps, user accounts, security policies,\u0026nbsp;and permission structures. Add to that the\u0026nbsp;silos of the historical messages and\u0026nbsp;customer/contact data, and numerous developer code bases for whatever automated processes the organization chose to build.\u0026nbsp;The problem is a lack of cohesive, managed messaging across most organizations, this results in reduced or resistance to\u0026nbsp;adoption, higher costs, and a disconnected user experience.Rake simplifies and unifies all forms of messaging, reduces vendors, improves access and security, cascades critical business rules and message templates,\u0026nbsp;and facilitates a write-once development environment using a universal message format.The messaging market is big, so there are many competitors. We tend to think about the companies that are either going after Universal Messaging or who are in the position to shift to Universal Messaging.Companies that would need a fundamental shift include\u0026nbsp;Microsoft Teams and Slack. These companies have vast resources, but they really would need to reinvent themselves. You also have chat companies like LiveChat, Drift, Intercom, and many others. These companies tend to have contact center pricing models. We think it would be difficult to switch to a complete company pricing model and undermine their current revenue stream.LivePerson is a company going after the Universal Messaging market from the enterprise side. But we believe it will be difficult to downsize into a subscription pricing model.\u0026nbsp;Rocket.chat shows promise in traversing both omnichannel chat and internal collaboration, but we think they have a big miss without having a single, common message structure across platforms. That is an especially challenging problem to fix with their distributed\u0026nbsp;(open-source)\u0026nbsp;codebase.In the long-term, we believe our market can be any organization that uses messaging.But, that's not our target in the next few years. First, we want to target a few verticals where we have an outstanding offering right now for contact center applications. At the end of this year, with the roadmap items we've outlined completed, we would expect to follow a product-led growth strategy with some specific targets where sales and support are the drivers.W5 Golf, Inc. was an early user of\u0026nbsp;Slack,\u0026nbsp;since 2014, they used different web chat app for handling customer-based chats since about 2017.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;After implementing Rake in 2020, W5 reduced messaging vendors, improved and streamlined security and user management\u0026nbsp;for a now wholly\u0026nbsp;remote team of nearly 300\u0026nbsp;contact center\u0026nbsp;agents. Additionally, they were able to take\u0026nbsp;advantage of more automation tools using\u0026nbsp;a single-common platform for both customer chat and internal messaging/collaboration.This investment round ties directly to executing our strategic development roadmap and then moving into a Product Led Growth (PLG) strategy. We see this as a two-step process. As a first step, we know that Rake's current product serves inbound omnichannel to a variety of verticals with great value. It is perfect for what our biggest clients have been doing with it for the last two years. In light of those strengths, we have adapted our strategy to pursue tech providers in some key verticals that can add value to their subscription offerings by offering this service. Using this vertical partnership strategy, we will generate the recurring revenue needed to raise additional capital.Based on feedback and a user-driven roadmap, we know what features users are willing to pay for. Our go-to-market strategy will be based on PLG after we complete the critical elements on our strategic roadmap and implement a comprehensive and deep bench of upgrade features and add-ons.With over 500 active workspaces already using the platform daily, we are gathering valuable information and feedback from the early user base. We take pride in servicing a wide variety of organizations and verticals, our early users cover a broad spectrum of use cases. We have built a team with a bend toward product and technology. We have an excellent team of about a dozen developers in Ukraine. We have worked with many of these folks for a long time now and they are an important\u0026nbsp;key to our success.This is the third company Andy has started with a tech focus.Mike Brown has been leading software product directions and teams since 1999.\u0026nbsp;Jim Wood, our CTO, was the CTO at Andy's first company and was still at that company until about a year ago. His background is with highly redundant\u0026nbsp;and scalable systems with the Air Force and telecom industries.\u0026nbsp;Mike Hendrix is our CRO and will lead our go-to-market strategies. Mike\u0026nbsp;has been with Rake for about 18 months and\u0026nbsp;brings an impressive background growing B2B and B2C service and technology products.\u0026nbsp;We met Mike while in\u0026nbsp;a partnership relationship and we grew\u0026nbsp;to respect his tenacity, ingenuity, and\u0026nbsp;leadership.\u0026nbsp;","location":"Chicago, IL","website":"https://rake.ai","total_amount_raised":84623,"total_investors":35,"is_funded":true,"is_active":true,"quality_score":3,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/rake","https://rake.ai"]},"media":{"share_image_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/98975/xxl_cropped_as-fb-Rake-1200x1500.jpg","logo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/logo/98975/large_cropped_Square_FullColor-200x200.png","header_media_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/98975/standard_cropped_as-fb-Rake-1200x1500.jpg","cover_photo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/98975/standard_cropped_as-fb-Rake-1200x1500.jpg","profile_video_url":"https://wefunder.wistia.com/medias/7r7f29khvp"},"links":{"company_url":"https://rake.ai"},"highlights":[],"quick_facts":[{"index":1,"claim_id":"claim-fact-1","value":"📈 Added 1,184 workspaces between March and May 2021"},{"index":2,"claim_id":"claim-fact-2","value":"🦾Averaging 18 daily signups"},{"index":3,"claim_id":"claim-fact-3","value":"💼Team includes previous founders with combined multiple exits"}],"team":[{"id":2183669,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:2183669","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:2338128","role":"founder","name":"Andy Weeks","title":"Founder and Chairman","bio":"Founder \u0026amp; CEO Company Name W5 Golf, Inc. Dates Employed Sep 2006 – Present Employment Duration 15 yrs 1 mo","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_role/custom_photo/2183669/square_cropped_Remini20210616152441742_2__-_Copy.jpg?1637358870","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/andyweeks","linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-weeks-2476092/","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/andyweeks"]},{"id":2154106,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:2154106","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:2286121","role":"founder","name":"Mike Brown","title":"Founder and President","bio":"VP Product Management Company Name EZLinks Golf, Inc. Dates Employed Jan 1998 – Nov 2011 Employment Duration 13 yrs 11 mos","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_role/custom_photo/2154106/square_cropped_MJB_profile.jpg?1642277127","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/mike.brown.4","linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-brown-6552a59/","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/mike.brown.4"]},{"id":2146477,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:2146477","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:2131691","role":"employee","name":"Mike Hendrix","title":"Chief Revenue Officer","bio":"Led sales at NBC Universal digital sports Product creator: Subway Box Lunch - 7 figure sales, Automated dynamic pricing engine for tee times - 8 figure sales, Universal messaging channel","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_role/custom_photo/2146477/square_cropped_2__1_.jpg?1637359568","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/mike.hendrix","linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmhendrix","twitter_url":"https://twitter.com/MrMHendrix","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/mike.hendrix"]},{"id":2154103,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:2154103","role":"employee","name":"Jim Wood","title":"CTO","bio":"Chief Technologist Company Name EZLinks Golf LLC Dates Employed Jun 1999 – Jan 2021 Employment Duration 21 yrs 8 mos","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company_role/custom_photo/2154103/square_cropped_Wood_Jim_LinkedIn-1_2_.jpg?1637358876","linkedin_url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimwoodiasa/","related_urls":[]}],"featured_investors":[{"id":4634,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_investor_profile:4634","investor_profile_id":1986730,"investor_profile_entity_id":"wefunder:investor_profile:1986730","subject_entity_id":"wefunder:user:2508504","name":"Jonathan P Remijas","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/2021/user_default_icon_circle.png","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/jonathan.p.remijas.2","investment_total":3000,"investment_info":"Invested $3,000 this round","is_lead_investor":true,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/jonathan.p.remijas.2"]}],"investor_memos":[],"tab_counts":{"posts":1,"ask_questions":8,"featured_investors":1,"faq_entries":3},"active_fundraises":[{"id":52180,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:52180","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","funding_type":"note","structure":"safe","security_type":"equity","currency":"USD","testing_the_waters":false,"min_purchase":100,"max_purchase":9,"funding_target":50000.0,"funding_started_at":"2022-01-25T01:51:31Z","funding_closed_at":"2022-05-03T05:01:46Z","auto_close_at":"2022-05-01T03:59:59Z"},{"id":52181,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:52181","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","funding_type":"note","structure":"ttw","security_type":"equity","currency":"USD","testing_the_waters":true,"min_purchase":100,"max_purchase":9,"funding_target":1000000.0,"funding_started_at":"2021-10-08T23:17:11Z"}],"latest_fundraise":{"id":52180,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:52180","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","structure":"safe","testing_the_waters":false,"can_invest_now":false,"funding_started_at":"2022-01-25T01:51:31Z","funding_closed_at":"2022-05-03T05:01:46Z","terms":{"eb":"$12.6M","nb":"$14M","txt":"valuation cap"}},"recent_posts":[{"id":152301,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:152301","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Rake launches Outbound Omnichannel Messaging Campaigns","preview":"We're introducing Rake's Outbound Omnichannel Messaging Campaigns this week.Rake now offers Outbound Campaigns as part of its Omnichannel capabilities. With Outbound Campaigns, users enjoy a simple and familiar user interface in their Rake workspace. This allows them to find and/or import contacts, tag them to a list, and craft rich messaging campaigns. All in a matter of minutes.Sending Campaign messages also allows the creator to specify a hierarchy of omnichannel platforms over which they ...","published_at":"2022-04-06T17:17:42Z","author_name":"Mike Brown","url":"/feed/152301","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/152301"}],"q_and_a":[{"id":207172,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:207172","question":"You raised money less than 1 month ago and you are already shut down?? Are you refunding investors and early adopters? I certainly hope so or you are going to have a very upset set of former supporters.","author_name":"Bryan Bennett","votes":2,"created_at":"2022-06-02T16:05:37Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-207172","answers":[]},{"id":207040,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:207040","question":"These guys are fraudsters. They raised capital from lots of small business people, from AppSumo etc for their Beer and Pizza and then shut the operations without informing. Please dont invest in this project. It is already closed as per Mike Hendrix. The website rake.ai is no longer working and these guys have swindled from hard working small business and disappeared without informing anything to anyone.","author_name":"Anupam Tandon","votes":2,"created_at":"2022-06-01T16:27:40Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-207040","answers":[]},{"id":212609,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:212609","question":"Hello, I see that rake is no longer operating. Looks like the crowdfunding campaign was just a cash grab? Please give details of where this money has gone","author_name":"Noah Posner","votes":1,"created_at":"2022-07-25T15:32:27Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-212609","answers":[]},{"id":206820,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:206820","question":"What happened to the app? Is it down ? We are facing outage. Even the main website is down. Please guide.","author_name":"Anupam Tandon","votes":1,"created_at":"2022-05-30T15:20:11Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-206820","answers":[]},{"id":192128,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:192128","question":"Hi Mike/Andy, May I know what is the reason for early rolling close?","author_name":"Rajesh Rai","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-02-12T18:28:51Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-192128","answers":[]},{"id":190521,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:190521","question":"I am interested. I have few questions 1. My apology I may not get how it works. Is Rake a CRM company or + providing some customer service as well- are you just collecting customer queries from all the channels with providing some automated AI enabled messaging with common questions answers. Please explain more. 2. Competitive landscape-who is your actual competitors. How big are they? What advantage do you have so you are better off them? 3. What is your current MRR or ARR? Revenue projection next couple of years. 4. What is the biggest challenge for Rake? 5. Do you not approach to any VC yet? if not why?","author_name":"Badal Haider","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-01-30T18:11:11Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-190521","answers":[{"id":191839,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:191839","answer":"Hi Badal, First of all, thank you for your interest in Rake. I'll answer your questions below: 1. Rake is not a CRM. While messaging is and will continue to become integral to CRM platforms, we are not focused on competing directly in that space. Our vision for Rake is to remain a highly-manageable universal messaging platform suitable for any organization's needs. Our vision is that Rake would tightly integrate to a large number of popular CRMs that provide APIs to do so. This funding round will help us get there faster. 2. Organizations have many options in chat and messaging, historically they made choices based on specific use cases. After some time these organizations realize they have silos of data, users, and messaging code (bots/automation/etc). As they work through trying to consolidate and manage their messaging we feel we will be in the best position to win. Rake's messaging platform is architected to help manage and retain consistency using cascading business rules, roles, and message templates - with a single API message format. Those organizations who want to create a unified messaging ecosystem will quickly realize the value here. In this context, there is a small list of competitors at the moment who support both internal and omnichannel messaging use cases, such as rocket.chat, groove, brosix, and pink. We see that rocket.chat claims to have 12M+ users worldwide and could be considered the segment leader. We feel we have a late-mover advantage here as we've incorporated the concept of a universal message format (a single message format across all Platforms) to significantly improve the developer experience. 3. We are just one month into revenue-focused activations. We have over 500 active workspaces, we had success in 2021 with some lifetime deal campaigns, this added users and provided valuable feedback, but they were one-time events. After the investment, we anticipate our MRR will track at about $32,670 after 6 months, after 12mo MRR will be $97,470, and after 18mo we will track to $178,470 in MRR. 4. Our biggest challenge over the next 12-18 months will be ramping up a team to build out the platform to compete and win at the enterprise level. This is precisely why we are seeking funding. The market opportunity is massive and will continue to grow as organizations adopt omnichannel messaging and realize they need a more unified way forward. The investment will allow us to add critical team members with specific expertise to help attract large clients with sophisticated requirements. 5. We are actively talking to VCs and other investors with experience or desire to be in the messaging space. Wefunder momentum helps accelerate those conversations.","author_name":"Mike Brown","votes":1,"created_at":"2022-02-10T14:36:31Z"}]},{"id":190228,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:190228","question":"Hey guys - Just a quick question, what features are on your current roadmap for the next 6 to 12 months? Thank you.","author_name":"Mario Maravolo","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-01-28T17:46:16Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-190228","answers":[{"id":190957,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:190957","answer":"Hi Mario - thanks for the question. I want to share some updates we released yesterday: Introducing Message Templates and Pre-Chat Forms With Message Templates, you can display rich messaging functionality, such as forms and buttons, on Rake Live Chat. A message template can be displayed on the widget opening based on visitor criteria on a page and/or date and time settings. Then, you can customize the message so that your form gathers contact information, a reason for starting the chat, as well as determine what actions happen after the form is submitted. Markdown (Rich Text) Conversations in Channels and Direct Messages now support markdown tags. In brief, markdown allows you to easily customize your messages with rich text styles such as bold, italic, strikethrough, hyperlinks, and others.","author_name":"Mike Hendrix","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-02-03T14:57:11Z"},{"id":191055,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:191055","answer":"Hi Mario. In addition to these recently released features, our next sprint will include no-code bulk outbound omnichannel campaigns, and voice memos with in-line playback as a message. You can find a complete overview of the Rake Roadmap in executive summary form in the Downloads section on the Rake page on Wefunder.","author_name":"Mike Brown","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-02-03T23:17:15Z"}]},{"id":189747,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:189747","question":"I'm concerned about your financials. How are your operating expenses so high? You’re burning $130K a month and have debt and no cash? Are you seeking additional funding outside of this raise? Thanks","author_name":"Roger Lightsey","votes":0,"created_at":"2022-01-25T18:53:01Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/rake#question-189747","answers":[{"id":189812,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:189812","answer":"Thanks for the question, Roger. We don't see our operating expenses or burn rate as being high for the opportunity we are going after. In my previous two startups, we went through periods with higher burn rates and had excellent outcomes. Honestly, we would expect, at some point in Rake's future, to have higher burn rates as we go after a very large market. Nonetheless, it will be extremely important that we continue to prove market acceptance as we make additional strides with our platform. This Wefunder raise represents an initial foray into outside investments. To this point, we have been funded by founders. We agree that it is important that we look past this raise to additional rounds - and we have been doing a lot of legwork toward that. Lastly, we don't consider the company's debt to be a cash flow burden. The money is from founders, it carries very low interest, and it has no near-term payment obligation. Once again - appreciate the question and interest.","author_name":"Andy Weeks","votes":1,"created_at":"2022-01-26T00:35:44Z"}]}],"faq":[{"question":"I'm concerned about your financials. How are your operating expenses so high? You’re burning $130K a month and have debt and no cash? Are you seeking additional funding outside of this raise? Thanks","answer":"Thanks for the question, Roger. We don't see our operating expenses or burn rate as being high for the opportunity we are going after. In my previous two startups, we went through periods with higher burn rates and had excellent outcomes. Honestly, we would expect, at some point in Rake's future, to have higher burn rates as we go after a very large market. Nonetheless, it will be extremely important that we continue to prove market acceptance as we make additional strides with our platform. ..."},{"question":"Hey guys - Just a quick question, what features are on your current roadmap for the next 6 to 12 months? Thank you.","answer":"Hi Mario - thanks for the question. I want to share some updates we released yesterday: Introducing Message Templates and Pre-Chat Forms With Message Templates, you can display rich messaging functionality, such as forms and buttons, on Rake Live Chat. A message template can be displayed on the widget opening based on visitor criteria on a page and/or date and time settings. Then, you can customize the message so that your form gathers contact information, a reason for starting the chat, as w..."},{"question":"I am interested. I have few questions 1. My apology I may not get how it works. Is Rake a CRM company or + providing some customer service as well- are you just collecting customer queries from all the channels with providing some automated AI enabled messaging with common que...","answer":"Hi Badal, First of all, thank you for your interest in Rake. I'll answer your questions below: 1. Rake is not a CRM. While messaging is and will continue to become integral to CRM platforms, we are not focused on competing directly in that space. Our vision for Rake is to remain a highly-manageable universal messaging platform suitable for any organization's needs. Our vision is that Rake would tightly integrate to a large number of popular CRMs that provide APIs to do so. This funding round ..."}]}}}