Demin Social, a St. Louis startup that provides social media management tools for financial services firms, plans to expand its technology and headcount after raising $5 million.
FINTOP Capital, a venture capital firm based in Nashville with a St. Louis presence, and partner fund JAM FINTOP Banktech led Denim Social’s Series B funding round. Jared Winegrad, managing director at FINTOP Capital and a member of JAM FINTOP Banktech’s investment committee, will join Denim Social’s board as part of the funding.
The fresh funding follows a $4 million Series A financing raised by Denim Social in 2020. The latest round of funding values Denim Social at $30 million, the startup said.
Denim Social provides social media management and marketing software to more than 250 organizations in the banking, insurance, mortgage and wealth management fields. Denim Social formed in April 2020 with the merger of St. Louis startup Gremlin Social and Des Moines, Iowa-based Denim.
As it seeks out expansion, Denim Social CEO Douglas Wilber said strengthening and enhancing the startup’s technology will be a major priority.
“We’ve got a very rich and robust product roadmap. This new round of funding is going to be devoted directly into building new features and functionality and make us even more valuable for existing customers and the customers that we will bring on to the platform,” he said.
Denim Social currently has 39 employees, 23 of whom are located in St. Louis. Wilber said the startup could expand to upwards of 60 to 70 employees in the next six to nine months as it targets hiring in areas such as sales, marketing and software development.
“All departments are going to see an increased amount of investment. You’re also going to see us spend a little bit more money on marketing, which we really haven’t done a lot of in the past. We built this business primarily off of just word of the mouth over the last handful of years,” Wilber said.
For Wilber, the investors behind the Series B round provide as much excitement as the capital itself. He said the startup intentionally pursued investors that provide a high-level of expertise and experience in the financial services and financial technology fields. For example, he noted that JAM FINTOP Banktech counts more than 60 banks as investors in its fund. The fund is a joint venture of FINTOP Capital and New York-based Jacobs Asset Management.
“There’s no shortage of venture capital. There’s a lot of different places you can go to get a check. That wasn’t our intention with this round of funding," Wilber said. "We really wanted to make sure we were partnering with an organization who could help us accelerate not just with a capital infusion, but a knowledge base and experience that could come onto our board of directors and guide us into our next phase of growth."
