MemoryFox is sticking with its “secret sauce” – nonprofit foundations.
The software-as-a-service business, which helps nonprofits collect and tell stories from the people they serve, recently closed a $400,000 funding round that was raised mostly locally. Half came from the University at Buffalo’s Buffalo Innovation Seed Fund, $50,000 came from Launch NY, and the rest came from local angel investors.
MemoryFox also closed on a $380,000 seed round last year.
The new funds will help the startup continue to grow by increasing its customer base of nonprofit foundations, said Chris Miano, CEO and founder.
“These community-building deals, group deals, that’s the focus,” he said. “The point of sale, you really get a whole community out of it instead of just individuals.”
The strategy helps the business scale, build better software and attract investors, he added. It also boosts the value to the customers, since a foundation that supports multiple nonprofits makes it easier for MemoryFox to provide such services as knowledge-based education materials and webinars.
It would be more difficult to have those offerings with individual nonprofits versus multiple organizations connected through one foundation.
Getting foundations as customers also alleviates costs to nonprofits themselves.
MemoryFox will increase its customer base by adding team members in sales and marketing to target foundations. Miano currently leads a team of 10, two of which started this week, and is looking to hire more developers.
The business is already growing. MemoryFox doubled its year-over-year annual recurring gross revenue and has more than doubled its customer count compared to last year. The startup has doubled its closing rate to nearly 25%.
“I think in a world that’s increasingly aware of inequity when it comes to fund distributions and communities and certain advantages that come with being bigger and well-organized nonprofits, now we’re the only ones that can go downstream, get those mom-and-pops and still have unit economics that make sense and allow us to hire a great team that can scale,” Miano said.
MemoryFox is one of 32 local companies to acknowledge a private, growth-oriented round of funding this year. The list includes Torch Labs ($40 million), Centivo ($30 million), Circuit Clinical ($29 million), Kangarootime ($26 million), SparkCharge ($22 million), CleanFiber ($8.5 million), PostProcess Technologies ($5 million), VeriTX ($4.5 million), HELIXintel ($4 million), Blockfusion ($2.6 million), ShearShare ($2.3 million), Azuna ($3 million), Patient Pattern ($2 million), OneBridge Benefits ($2 million), BetterMynd ($1 million), CoachMePlus ($1 million), Empire Hemp Co. ($1 million), CaHill Tech ($1 million), Buffalo Film Works ($750,000), FavorDrop ($725,000), Wellconnected ($550,000), MemoryFox ($400,000), Ellicottville Greens ($300,000), Swift Rails ($255,000) AireXpert ($125,000), Arbol ($110,000), Lemma Labs ($100,000), Timberhut (undisclosed), Flox (undisclosed), Ognomy (undisclosed) and Vicora/Ampullae (undisclosed).
