In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine newly funded companies Permanent, Finally, and 11x.ai
1. Permanent
Farmers are SMBs too… in fact farming is the original SMB vertical. One issue facing farmers in the digital age is a lack of standardization and tech to interface with large buyers (grocers, food distributors, etc.). Their systems are fragmented and outdated. But there’s no lack of demand as buyers are always on the lookout for new suppliers. Permanent has stepped in to eliminate this fog of ambiguity as a marketplace for local food sourcing. Its single-source approach makes it easier to deal with all that fragmentation when large buyers and distributors are looking for fresh supply. In the meantime, it helps all those farmers get found, and even helps standardize their business development and contracts. . And it wouldn’t be complete without an AI angle. It uses machine learning to predict supply levels for farm produce, and how that will impact supply chains (seems like that could be used for commodities futures). Meanwhile, Permanent works with 60 farms in California as well as 20 large commercial buyers. It just raised a $3.7 million seed round (“seed” being an appropriate term) led by Better Tomorrow Ventures, with participation from Atman Capital, Autopilot, and Gaingels. It will use the funding to expand its sales and tech teams, and to expand geographically.
2. Finally
When looking at the places where AI can have the most impact, and where it will be most welcomed, it’s often where it streamlines or automates rote tasks that people dread. We’re talking SEO meta descriptions, email marketing copy, and other such tasks. SMBs especially find these marketing items daunting, as they’d rather be in the kitchen or seeing patients – or whatever their primary skill happens to be. Another task that’s high on that list is bookkeeping, which many SMBs simply do on their own using tools like Quickbooks. SMB-focused Finally hopes to scratch that itch. In addition to bookkeeping, it offers adjacent and dovetailing services like payroll (which Quickbooks also offers), expense management, and corporate credit cards (putting it in competition with companies like Brex). The goal in all of this is to achieve one-stop-shop appeal, which is often a success factor when it comes to SMB SaaS, due to their aversion to software… and thus disparate platforms and point solutions. It’s working so far, given the company’s 300 percent year-over-year revenue growth, and 1,500 SMB customers. It also just landed a $50 million Series B round and a $150 million credit line. This brings its total lifetime funding to $74 million in equity and $305 million in debt.
3. 11x.ai
Moving from bookkeeping to business development, AI is finding a place up the ladder with more complex and skilled work. 11x.ai is one company pushing this forward with bots that do sales development work. This is an area that Salesforce has started to cultivate, in addition to several startups, so it could turn into a land grab. 11x.ai specifically develops what it calls “automated digital workers,” which currently manifest in two bots. One is “Alice,” which focuses on sales lead generation, prospect research, and even outreach. She’s joined by “Jordan” (I guess it helps to personify AI bots), which is an AI phone rep to cultivate and qualify leads for inbound and outbound calls. The company is nearing $10 million in annual recurring revenue, reports TechCrunch, and just landed a $50 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, which assigns a post-money valuation of $350 million. It will use some of the new cash to develop associates for Alice and Jordan, including bots that specialize in HR and recruiting. We’ll watch closely to see how that goes.
