The Next Chapter in Boulevard’s Journey

Boulevard has raised an $80M Series D Financing. The round was led by JMI Equity with continued support from Index Ventures and VMG Partners.

Spend your talents on a more deserving market.

Eight words I'll never forget—words that still fuel me today. They were said eight years ago during Boulevard’s seed round by a prominent venture capitalist who sat politely across the table from my co-founder Sean and me. His tone was almost kind, like a friend gently warning us not to order fish on a Monday. The message was clear, though: he thought beauty and self-care businesses were too small, too messy, and unworthy of his—or our—investment. He implied that the world had bigger problems to tackle, more compelling opportunities elsewhere. We thanked him, walked out, and immediately resolved to prove him wrong.

Walking out of that meeting, I felt two conflicting emotions. First, the sting—there’s no anesthetic for hearing someone dismiss the very people you fiercely admire and the company you had spent two years grinding away on and bootstrapped with the entirety of our life savings and 401(k)s. But there was also a spark—the exhilaration of recognizing something others couldn't, paired with the powerful motivation of having something to prove.

What that investor failed to see was an industry filled with hardworking, resilient, deeply entrepreneurial professionals, responsible for millions of jobs. His viewpoint was clouded by outdated stigmas and preconceived notions.

In retrospect, that conversation was a preview of the journey ahead: a long path of supporting an industry that had been chronically overlooked and underestimated, viewed as offline and "under the counter." Even today, you wouldn’t believe how often folks assume that Boulevard is our customers' first digital solution—an assumption that might have been relevant 20 years ago.

I share this story not to dwell on the past, but to celebrate the incredible progress we've made and to remind us all that tremendous opportunities often exist where others aren’t looking.

Series D: Fueling the Next Chapter

Today, I'm proud to announce that Boulevard has raised an $80M Series D investment, led by JMI Equity, with continued participation from Index Ventures and VMG Partners.

The truth is, not much fundamentally changes after a raise—we simply go back to building. Same goals, now with more fuel and an even sharper focus to solve real problems for our customers and the industry. This milestone funding will propel us even further—accelerating growth and enabling even deeper investments into AI and differentiated enterprise capabilities. As Sean mentioned in his blog post this morning, AI stands to revolutionize personalized client experiences. As the first and only client experience platform in our space, Boulevard is well-positioned to help our customers move confidently and safely into this new era of AI-powered client experiences that are highly optimized and deeply personal. 

A Partner Who Shares Our Vision

We warmly welcome Matt Emery, Preston Horner, and the entire JMI Equity team to Boulevard. Our approach to fundraising has always prioritized partnerships with those who align with our vision and values, genuinely believing in our mission and industry. JMI is precisely that partner, bringing extensive experience supporting vertical software companies in their journeys to becoming generational brands.

If you’re keeping track, since being told to take our talents to a more “deserving” industry, we’ve now raised nearly $190 million in total from some of the smartest investors in the world. More importantly, we’ve grown by staying laser-focused on serving the self-care community and building a brand and reputation that transcends our technology. We’ve also gone from knocking on doors around Los Angeles, hoping that willing salon owners would take a chance on us, to powering over 40,000 professionals in more than 5,000 businesses across almost every type of appointment-based self-care vertical in the country. Boulevard is now used to book more than 2 million monthly appointments and process nearly $5 billion through our proprietary payment rails annually.

Self-Care Industry is Booming

Boulevard’s growth is part of a bigger story: the entire self-care industry has been on an incredible upswing. The market for out-of-home personal care services now exceeds $300B in the U.S. alone across roughly 465,000 establishments. That number exceeds $900B across more than 3.5M establishments globally. In the medspa space alone, AmSpa projects the number of establishments in the U.S. is on track to explode from just 7,000 back at the start of 2020 to nearly double that by the end of 2026. 

It’s not just the growth that makes the industry stand out; it’s the consumer loyalty and repeat purchase behavior. Across our customer base, we see that 82% of appointments come from a returning client, which helps create a resilience so powerful that even a global pandemic couldn’t ruin it. According to McKinsey, consumers now say that in the event of an economic downturn, they are less likely to cut spending across a range of wellness subcategories than they are on other consumer spending buckets, such as clothing, entertainment, and home decor. At the same time, looking (and consequently, feeling) their best has skyrocketed up the list of health and wellness concerns for U.S. Gen Z consumers. Bank of America Institute reports that Baby Boomers are increasing their spending on self-care services at a greater rate than any other generation. In other words, self-care has never mattered more to Americans than it does today.

Gratitude

I'm profoundly grateful to our customers, employees, and investors for their continued support and trust. It’s an honor to serve this remarkable industry and the exceptional people within it—people who truly deserve every ounce of success we've achieved together.

P.S. – We’re hiring. We’re partnering. We’re always listening. Drop us a line if you’d like to shape what comes next.