One breakout story from the 43North competition received an injection of funding as it settles into its new Buffalo digs.
HiOperator is a tech-enabled customer service company. Business increased by 400% in 2020, and is expected to post impressive growth figures again this year, founder and CEO Elizabeth Tsai said.
The company – which opened an office in Dallas earlier this year – received a new investment recently from HearstLab. Owned by media company Hearst, the HearstLab project makes investments into early-stage, women-led startups across a variety of industries.
“Liz has a great track record of leading highly capital-efficient growth, driven by product-market fit,” said Eve Burton, HearstLab chairperson. “We believe HiOperator under Liz’s leadership is innovative and has strong technology, and that she and the team have executed flawlessly.”
HearstLab was an early investor in HiOperator before it moved to Buffalo in late 2018. Tsai said the startup wasn’t actively raising money but that Hearst was a known partner impressed with HiOperator’s growth. The amount of the investment was not made public.
Tsai has declined to say how many employees HiOperator has overall, but said it has created hundreds of positions in Buffalo in the last few years. The company recently moved into new local headquarters – a 25,000-square-foot office in Paul Koklmeyer’s Roblin Building.
“There is a ton of demand in the (business process outsourcing) space right now,” Tsai said. “Many of them are at all-time highs. Our goal is to grow as quickly as we can to fill that demand as fast as possible.”
HiOperator is the 21st local company to acknowledge growth-oriented financing this year. The others include Jerry ($103 million), Squire ($60 million), Tackle.io ($35 million), Torch Labs ($25 million), Circuit Clinical ($7.5 million), SomaDetect ($6 million), Kickfurther ($5.9 million), HELIXintel ($1.6 million), Joblio ($4 million), Patient Pattern ($1.2 million), Ellicottville Greens ($1 million), Ognomy ($700,000), Immersed Games ($540,000), Braid Babes ($415,000), MemoryFox ($380,000), Zizo Technologies ($200,000), Thimble.io ($125,000), AirExpert ($100,000) and Classavo (undisclosed).
