Atlanta health technology startup Florence Healthcare raised a $27 million funding round as it plans to add 100 employees and double its customer count.
The round was led by New York venture capital fund Insight Partners, which also led an $80 million Series C round in Florence Healthcare last year. Atlanta-based Fulcrum Equity Partners and San Francisco-based Bee Partners also participated. The startup has $115 million in total investments.
The raise also comes at a tumultuous time for startups to raise capital. Investors have largely pulled back from tech businesses due to company valuations being reset and uncertain economic conditions. Atlanta's OneTrust laid off almost 1,000 employees as a result of these strains. Marketing tech startup Terminus and Sonar Software also laid off employees in the recent weeks.
Florence Healthcare helps speed up clinical trials by automating the paperwork done by physicians when conducting clinical research. It's also used as a communication tool between researchers and drug companies.
Following the investment, the startup will spend around $10 million in research and development into its SiteLink platform. The product allows companies to more efficiently communicate, monitor and manage the sites that are doing the work for a given clinical trial.
Earlier this year, the company was named one of Atlanta’s 100 fastest-growing companies in the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter Awards. Last year, the company earned the Technology Association of Georgia’s Biggest Impact Company in Georgia award in addition to being named one of the Top 10 Innovative Companies in Georgia.
Since the start of 2021, the company’s customer count grew from approximately 50 to 100, said CEO and co-founder Ryan Jones. It tripled its employee count to 150. By the end of the year, he expects to reach 240 employees and 200 customers.
Usage of the startup’s software tripled during the pandemic, said Jones, when pharmaceutical companies needed to connect with physicians doing clinical trials.
“Companies couldn't put people on airplanes to go work with sites anymore, so we were able to tie together sites we were already helping and create a remote workflow tool, like Dropbox or Google Drive, that helped companies see into the work the trial sets were doing,” Jones said.
Around half the studies the startup supports are for cancer treatments. To date, the company has reached about 40,000 researchers in around 50 countries.
Florence Healthcare was founded in 2014 from a Georgia Tech program by Jones and his co-founders, chief technology officer Andres Garcia and former Emory physician Dr. Michael Kassin. Its office is in the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Atlanta.
