The way many Americans and people around the globe work is changing rapidly. While there's far less typical business travel and more people working from home, there are also millions of people who still have to be out in the field to ensure the flow of supplies and services.
In short, the world is much more complicated than it was a month ago. And Austin-based emergency communications startup AlertMedia sees itself as a critical component to helping businesses keep their employees safe and informed.
The company on Tuesday announced it has raised $15 million in new Series C funding to hire about 20 new employees to help its growing customer base. The new investment was led by AlertMedia's prior investors -- JMI Equity, Next Coast Ventures and Silverton Partners.
The new funding comes a little more than a year after it announced a $25 million growth equity investment from JMI Equity, a software investment company based in Baltimore. In essence, the new round is an extension of that, taking their Series C from $25 million to $40 million.
The new round brings its total amount raised to $57 million. Citing a source with knowledge of the funding, Forbes reported AlertMedia's valuation grew from about $120 million to about $250 million in this latest funding round.
For many startups, the pandemic has made raising venture capital dollars significantly harder, but AlertMedia said it didn't face those challenges because of its recent growth.
"The goal of this round was to pad our balance sheet so we have significant runway, continue to accelerate our growth, invest in continued product innovation, and to allow us to look at potential acquisition targets," AlertMedia CEO Brian Cruver told Inno via email.
The company currently has 150 full-time employees and plans to hire 20 more.
AlertMedia, founded in 2013, has built its business around helping employers keep their employees, especially those who travel or work in the field, informed and safe. In the past, that has meant tracking big weather events, like hurricanes, and geopolitical disputes or other dangerous activity that could put employees at risk when working in certain areas.
Its platform connects to a variety of devices, providing mass messaging over text, email and more. That can help employers easily get updates from workers in remote places before, during and after a disaster or other emergency event. It also has monitoring services to track health and safety issues globally to help employers make decisions about deploying resources.
The company already counts Walmart, DHL and Greyhound among its users. And it noted it added almost 250 enterprise customers in the month of March as the coronavirus outbreak became a pandemic and much of the world began restricting public gatherings and non-essential activity outside of the home.
As the pandemic took hold, AlertMedia said it has been seeing customers use its platform for two-way messaging, operational updates, wellness checkups and basic communications. Its threat monitoring maps have added new content to help customers track shelter-in-place regulations, transportation restrictions and employee check-ins. It's also being used to communicate about office closures, openings and shift changes.
The company says it has doubled its year-over-year revenue, recently surpassing $20 million in annual recurring revenue.
"Communication is more important now than ever," Cruver wrote. "We have all types of essential businesses using AlertMedia: healthcare, grocery stores, restaurants, manufacturing, etc., and as you can imagine, they need our software to communicate operationally around closures, potential exposures to the virus, safety tips."
In addition to its day-to-day work, AlertMedia launched its Support Austin Initiative three weeks ago, which includes donations of $5,000 each to 20 different local nonprofits. It's also giving employees weekly Favor credits to spend with local Austin restaurants.
"We are very grateful to be in a position to help during this crisis. Our team is working around the clock to support our customers as they navigate COVID-19, and we are thankful that our software can help organizations and their people during this pandemic," Cruver wrote.
