Pasadena-based Digital Queuing Company QLess Acquired by Palisades Growth Capital

QLess, a Pasadena-based company that supplies appointment scheduling software allowing people to line up virtually using a smartphone app, get waiting time estimates and get notified when it’s their turn, is now owned by Palisades Growth Capital in Los Angeles, after Palisades led a new financing round that’s expected to accelerate growth across the business.

The amount of the new funding and the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Mark Tapling, QLess CEO, said Palisades Growth Capital have been investing with the company since four years ago and have decided to infuse more money into the business. The new capital could enable QLess to hire more people in the Pasadena area, add staff to their international operations, and advance the product line towards a next-generation QLess platform, he said.

“QLess is actually a mature company. We have over 500 customers,” Tapling said. “People love the products and so we did a refinancing and new money was added into the balance sheet. So that’s exciting for the company. Palisades doubled down their bet. They really liked the business. And so in the end, the business changed control, and is owned primarily by Palisades now.”

Jeff Anderson, Managing Director at Palisades Growth Capital, said infusing more money into QLess is like “putting more gas in the tank for a business we like a lot.”

“We want to be a leader in the virtual queuing space,” Anderson said. “We already are, but this is to allow us to go deeper in our existing verticals and expand it to new verticals. But overall, we’ve just scratched the surface of what virtual queuing can do. Moving physical lines to virtual lines is a huge market opportunity.”

Verticals are business niches where vendors serve a specific audience and their set of needs. By contrast, a “horizontal” market has a focus that reaches a wide array of individuals and businesses, regardless of their industry or particular niche.

While individuals can schedule their appointments using their smartphones and do not need to physically line up, businesses can better manage their customer wait times on their office desktops using the QLess platform, also branded QLess.

With the software, businesses can also better monitor customer engagement and business workflows in real time, allowing them to adjust and re-balance resources to meet customer needs.

The company claims their platform has drastically reduced wait time and walk-aways across a range of customers, from government agencies to healthcare providers and event managers,