Buffalo Business First chose 10 companies this year for our inaugural Inno Fire awards, representing the breadth and diversity of Buffalo’s startup scene. These are their stories.
HELIXintel
CEO: Jon DeWald
Founded: 2019
Headquarters: University at Buffalo’s Incubator @ CBLS on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus
What the company does: Provides digital tools that help companies track, maintain and acquire equipment
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HELIXintel has built a suite of digital tools that help companies manage their own equipment.
The company has raised successive rounds of funding, from a $1.4 million pre-seed round in 2020 to a $4 million seed round recently. Venture capital investors took part in both rounds, saying that the startup is an innovative idea with massive potential.
Not many companies, after all, can offer simultaneous cost certainty and cost savings to everyone from small business to major corporations.
The equipment market crosses many industries, after all, and most specialize in something else.
“We are seeing adoption across new markets that will empower us to grow and to scale a lot faster,” newly hired chief revenue officer Christa Dahlem said. “A lot of these really large companies have tens of thousands of pieces of equipment. They need help managing and maintaining the life cycles of that equipment.”
HELIXintel is adding to its 12-person team this year as it seeks to continue putting up 40% month-over-month growth in users.
“When a customer sees true bottom-line results, expressed in dollars, time or sanity, their willingness to pay is legitimate and they'll stick around for a long time,” Lauren DeLuca, a Chicago-based venture capital investor in HELIXintel, said of the company.
