The Phoenix startup community is hustling to gain national prominence and it continues to attract funding dollars to bring their dreams to life. See who’s raising below.
Hammoq pulls in $3M seed round
Hammoq, an e-commerce reselling company based in Phoenix, has raised $3 million in a seed round last week.
The company helps people reselling goods on e-commerce platforms like eBay, Amazon, Etsy and more by automating listings. The Hammoq software is designed to streamline the listing process, which can be a tedious undertaking.
The funding round was led by Origin Ventures, a venture capital firm with offices in Chicago and Salt Lake City that has previously invested in GrubHub, Cameo and other software or digital marketplaces. Sierra Ventures, SaaS Ventures, and Silicon Road Ventures also participated in the round.
"As previous top resellers, we know that the best way to make money is getting products online: the more you list, the more you sell," Hammoq CEO and co-founder Sid Lunawat said in a statement. "The time and effort spent listing and managing products, tracking down inventory, and managing P&L eats into throughput – and profits – substantially. We have built Hammoq to automate those repetitive and time-consuming processes, ease the burden on eCommerce resellers, and ultimately help them sell more products. We do it with only a few photos."
Prashant Shukla of Origin Ventures will join the company's board as a result of the funding. Hammock said that the seed capital will be used to expand its team and further develop its product offerings.
Better Agency raises $2.1M
Better Agency, a cloud-based software company serving the insurance industry, recently raised $2.1 million in seed capital led by PHX Venture Partners.
Mesa-based Better Agency's software provides independent insurance agents a single platform to manage their agencies while also automating their sales process.
Will Shaw, co-founder and CEO of Better Agency, said there’s been a “massive boom” in business during the Covid-19 pandemic as insurance agents embraced remote working technology and, in the process, reconsidered their existing software setups.
Shaw, who previously worked with Keap in Chandler and once played in the NFL, was part of last year’s StartupAZ Growth Cohort alongside Chris Ronzio of Trainual, which recently raised a hefty series B round.. StartupAZ recently announced the 10 members of its 2021 Growth Cohort.
Shaw said that when the company was started in 2019, the founding team planned on bootstrapping and not raising any outside capital; But the seed round will be used to invest in the company’s product growth and expand the team locally.
He said that Better Agency has 16 employees now with seven openings they’re hoping to fill in the next few months. He said that by summer 2022, he expects the Better Agency to double its headcount.
