San Diego Social Media Startup Soci Adds Austin Office, Raises $8.5M

 
SOCi logo
 

Soci, a San Diego startup that created a Web platform for managing social media, has closed on $8.5 million in Series A financing that will be used to build on the company’s recent growth, including a second office in Austin, TX, according to co-founder and CEO Afif Khoury.

The five-year-old startup, which had 35 employees five months ago when it was named as a 2017 Xconomy San Diego company to watch, now has 50 employees.

Soci’s software-as-a-service provides a “central command” that enables business customers to deploy their social media marketing strategies, customize their brand messaging, and control their customer conversations across thousands of social media pages. Soci said it is fully integrated with the top social media and reputation management networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Yelp, and others.

In response to questions from Xconomy, Khoury said Soci already has recruited a new chief revenue officer, vice president of marketing, and vice president of inside sales in Austin.

“Austin is rich in enterprise sales and marketing talent, as well as digital marketing expertise,” Khoury wrote in an e-mail.  “We will maintain development, customer success, and part of marketing in San Diego, as well as all of the ancillary functions like HR, finance, etc. The rest of sales and marketing will headquarter from Austin.”

Khoury told me in the fall that Soci had increased its revenue by more than 300 percent last year, which was its second year of commercialization. Soci’s dramatic growth has continued since then, Khoury said. He plans to use Soci’s latest funding to deploy additional capital into new marketing initiatives, address new vertical markets, and hire additional sales reps and managers, develop new software products and services for Soci’s existing markets, and expand the team that works with customers and improve its processes.

Soci team (image courtesy of Soci)

According to a statement, Soci’s Series A round was led by two venture firms, Vertical Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based technology fund, and Grayhawk Capital, an Arizona technology fund. They were joined by the Stanford University DAPER fund, Peninsula Ventures, and Tallwave Capital.

Soci previously raised $4.25 million from local angel investors and Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, GrowthX, and Axon Ventures.

Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call (619) 669-8788 Follow @bvbigelow

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