In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine new funding for companies LaceAI, Faireez & Finom.
1. LaceAI
Sometimes innovators in local media & commerce hail from tech giants. This was the case with Boris Valkov, who left Meta to start LaceAI. In doing so, he took with him deep knowledge of AI, which was also developed in his pre-Meta days at PyTorch, one of the world’s largest machine learning libraries. All the above equipped him to build the technology at the heart of LaceAI. The company offers AI-fueled customer service software for home services SMBs. Specifically, it helps fix a longstanding issue where incoming calls don’t convert to new business simply because they’re mismanaged. That results from everything from unanswered calls to suboptimal lead cultivation. LaceAI steps in to monitor all these calls to ensure that leads aren’t squandered. It identifies leads with the most promise and advises on the best course of action to convert them into new business. The SaaS-based product already has 100 home services customers, which serves as validation that helped it land a $14 million seed round. It plans to use the money to expand its team and technology, including tripling its 20-person headcount.
2. Faireez
One of the qualities that people enjoy when staying in top-tier hotels is the professional standards in housekeeping. It often evokes a luxurious and VIP vibes when coming back to a room that’s been cleaned with surfaces wiped, pillows fluffed, and room supplies renewed. This is the feeling that Faireez hopes to capture by bringing 5-star hotel housekeeping to urban apartment buildings or multifamily condo complexes. It does this through a subscription model where buildings are assigned dedicated housekeepers who provide “consistent, personalized service” to every subscribed resident. This gives buildings and condo communities a competitive edge in offering such services to their tenants for a fee. They can then mark up that fee or decide to offer it at cost… or free as a building amenity. This model also makes Faireez a marketplace play by connecting these housing entities with local housekeeping professionals, thus offering a new business channel to the latter. The New York-based startup recently emerged from stealth with $7.5 million in seed funding, which it will use to build out its platform, staff up, and market itself to apartment buildings and condo communities. It also hopes to expand beyond its current service areas in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Illinois. As a marketplace’s business, this is always a challenge to achieve balance in both supply and demand. That will be the name of the game in Faireez’ expansion. But it’s off to a good start, given customers like Silverstein Properties, Charney Companies, First Service Residential, Ironstate, and BNE — altogether totalling 1 million living units.
3. Finom
Fintech has become a game of providing as many financial services as possible for one-stop-shop appeal. This is especially true for companies that serve the SMB sector, given the time-starved and tech-challenged personas that occupy that world. But it’s easier said than done because financial functions have high barriers to entry and regulatory hurdles, such as banking services. Finom is an SMB-focused fintech that has already crossed several of these barriers in its 5-year history. The Amsterdam-based startup has a bank license, on which it has built a broad financial platform that includes banking, invoicing, and AI-enabled accounting. These strengths recently attracted $133 million in Series C funding from General Catalyst and others. Beyond the tech and team that produced its product model, Finom has numbers to back up its narrative. It doubled its revenue last year, and has the ambitious goal of one million SMB customers by the end of 2026. Its momentum makes that an attainable goal, as does the fuel (funding) that it has recently added to the fire. Its addressable market includes the 26 million SMBs in Europe, as well as expansion targets in the similarly-sized U.S. SMB market.
