A team of former Samanage leaders has secured $21 million to finance a new Cary startup called Viably, dubbed an all-in-one financial management and banking app for small businesses.
At the helm of the new company is Doron Gordon, who led Samanage through its $329 million buyout by Texas-based SolarWinds in 2019. At the time, Samanage, founded in Israel but headquartered in Cary, had raised $74 million in venture capital.
After the exit, Gordon could have retired. He thought about it, but it just wasn’t “exciting.” What was exciting was getting the “band back together.” Samanage’s ex-leadership team started calling, looking for new and bigger challenges. And Gordon said he jumped at the opportunity.
“It’s a team of people who have a tremendous amount of respect for each other and really loves working with each other,” Gordon said. “We’re going after a bigger challenge.”
It’s a challenge born from when the team was trying to finance Samanage – working with banks and lenders. Gordon found it difficult to get traditional lenders to understand the business “so we never got funding from banks.” Access to capital is the number one concern he hears from fellow entrepreneurs. So Viably was created to match that concern.
“How can we build a system that is using a customer’s data set to really help them better understand the financials and really get them ready in the eyes of a lender?” he said, noting it comes down to several factors, from credit score to balance sheet.
Cary, where the team is based and where they built Samanage into an acquisition target, was the obvious choice for a headquarters.
“Cary is our roots,” he said.
Right now, the team is 30 people, including 20 engineers in Israel. The remaining 10 are based in downtown Cary.
The round came primarily from former Samanage backers, firms such as Viola Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Angular Ventures participated as did Durham-based Bull City Venture Partners and Tweener Fund, an investment startup out of serial entrepreneur Scot Wingo.
Gordon said the firm is also going to help startup businesses through a new grant program. Each month, Viable will randomly select a North Carolina firm from its customer list to receive a $2,500 grant package and free consulting with the Viably team.