Bellevue-based labor analytics tool Easy Metrics is looking to grow after raising $31 million from private equity firm Nexa Equity.
With the funding, which Easy Metrics announced May 21, the company is hunting for acquisitions, according to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dan Keto. Targets could include new technologies, he added.
"There's a lot of new technologies that are being built that are really valuable, but as a stand-alone technology, it doesn't create enough value to merit the go-to-market expense," Keto said. "You plug those sorts of technologies into our product suite, and if that integrates with what we do, we could leverage that much better."
Keto added that there are new technologies in artificial intelligence that could make a big impact for Easy Metrics.
Related coverage
Keto co-founded the company in 2012 with Dean Dorcas, the company's CEO, after the two had initially started a staffing firm in the '90s. Easy Metrics works with warehouses and manufacturers to track productivity, missing time and overtime costs, among other data. The company also allows clients to see the cost for every employee labor action and how costs vary by employee or shift.
Easy Metrics says it has more than 50 customers and serves over 250 warehouses. Keto said collecting all of this data can help clients understand the best use of employees' skills and the best way to run operations.
According to Keto, Easy Metrics has a little more than 40 employees, and the company could grow by about 10 to 15 employees over the next year. About half of its employees are based in the Seattle area. The company had an office in Issaquah before the Covid-19 pandemic but decided to go virtual once the pandemic hit. Keto said the company occasionally uses a coworking space in Bellevue and isn't actively looking for permanent space, but that could change if the company grows through hiring and acquisitions.
Nexa Equity is based in San Francisco. The private equity firm raised a $330 million fund last year. Nexa Equity was founded in 2021 and manages more than $350 million in capital. Its portfolio includes the towing and parking enforcement tool Autura and the payments platform Vendara. Vlad Besprozvany, Nexa Equity's founder and managing partner, previously worked at Greater Sum Ventures and Insight Partners.
Dorcas and Keto both graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1991. They both graduated from Harvard Business School about a decade later, but Keto said Dorcas was a year behind him.
"Dean and I have known each other since 1987," Keto said. "We both got our heads shaved the same day. ... We started talking about business back in 1987 and said we were going to do business together someday. Then he went off to his branch of the Navy, and I went off to my branch. Then we both got out and we were like, 'Let's go figure something out.'"
For more stories like this one, sign up for Seattle Inno newsletters from the Puget Sound Business Journal and the American Inno network.
