In the first quarter of 2020, Joshua Reid sat his employees down and told them the company may not survive another month. Reid encouraged workers to find backup employment and prepared for the worst.
That June, a one sentence email congratulating him on winning the $30,000 Main Street Ventures Leap Grant changed everything and set Inphlu, a social media marketing agency, on the track to success.
The grant money was immediately invested into a development team to work Inphlu’s fully automated, artificial intelligence software which launched in March of 2021.
The A.I. software with a human touch learns the patterns of its user, recommending relevant hot topics based on suggested approvals and rejections, and crafting automated captions for posts based on the writing style of the user.
“There's a lot of different nuances and factors that are going into learning an individual user, and not just giving a cookie-cutter approach which is often the solution on (social media) platforms,” Reid said.
Inphlu has an office in the Dayton Arcade, as well as an office in Cincinnati.
The software targets small businesses because Reid said big agencies don’t typically work with companies that don’t have thousands to spend on marketing.
“We know small businesses is how we got to where we are today, so we definitely didn't turn a blind eye to them,” Reid said. “Small businesses can definitely use our platform. It is very simple to get started. It's very affordable and they can get more than what they need.”
Inphlu, which has four employees, has continued to scale and grow since its fully automated version launched. The company serves over 2,700 monthly users, blowing away their estimated goal of 1,000 users by March of 2022.
The company has received a $50,000 grant from Jobs Ohio and additional pre-seed funding from an undisclosed number of current and potential investors, surpassing its projected $500,000 funding needs, five months ahead of schedule.
Reid said he anticipates kicking off Inphlu’s seed round in early 2022.
“I’m looking forward to the next round, hiring more of the right people, positioning our company to scale at a much faster rate, expanding our software getting into more markets get into more verticals and changing the way people view and use social media,” Reid said.
Inphlu
Founded: 2020
Owner: Joshua Reid
Employees: 4
Inphlu Website: https://inphlu.com/
Service: Social media marketing agency
