Chicago startup DeepWalk has found one way to avoid some of the fundraising woes that other startups have been experiencing this past year: Get one investor to take the entire funding round.
The sidewalk scanning company said it has closed a $1.4 seed investment from CEAS Investments, bringing its total financing to date to $1.8 million. And the new funding comes amid plans to move operations into the city.
"We're really fortunate," Brandon Yates, co-founder and CEO of DeepWalk, told Chicago Inno. "CEAS has been tracking us since sometime in the summer and they've liked the progress they've seen."
While he described having only one investor as somewhat "abnormal" for a typical seed fundraising process, he admits it beats having to pitch to 200-plus investors.
DeepWalk's first product looks to make the process of ensuring sidewalks are wheelchair accessible much easier for cities and universities.
The startup does automated inspections for city engineers and right now focuses on sidewalk and curb ramp accessibility inspections, though Yates has plans to expand the technology into other inspection types including traffic signals, transit stops, crosswalks and building entrances.
In 2022, the software was used to perform more than 3,000 sidewalk accessibility inspections across Danville, Peoria and Corinth. The new funding will be used to help scale the automated measurement process for the cities, universities and engineering consultants that need them.
A product of the entrepreneurship programs at the University of Illinois and University of Chicago, Yates and Anshul Shah started DeepWalk at the University of Illinois in 2019 through its National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps program.
Yates said they came up with the idea after listening to around 100 city engineers from across the country talk about sidewalk accessibility.
"They complained that inspections take too long, that they don't know how to put together the documents and that it's hard to stay up to date," he said. "We wrote those down and it became the basis of our company."
Using the DeepWalk app, city engineers can scan sidewalks and ramps to get automated measurements and ensure they are compliant with ADA standards. It also helps with keeping them up to date on legal planning documents and construction documents.
While Champaign had been home since the company's founding, DeepWalk is moving to downtown Chicago — to a new office at 620 LaSalle in River North — in part to make sure they are bringing in the best people to grow the team.
"Chicago is a better place to hire midlevel software engineers that we really need to mature the product," Yates said.
