[NEWS] Ekos announces $8M Series A to build software for craft breweries – Loganspace

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[NEWS] Ekos announces $8M Series A to build software for craft breweries – Loganspace


Ekos, a Charlotte, NC startup that creates tool to assist craft breweries and other beverage companies location up their companies, presented an $8 million Sequence A on the present time led byNoro-Moseley Partners, an Atlanta  endeavor agency.

Before taking this funding, the company had bootstrapped for the old five years, constructing a enterprise with 1700 potentialities in 40 countries. The corporate has created a full suite of tools to trace the entire lot from what’s in the tank, to recipes, raw materials, inventory and so on — the entire lot you wish to plod a brewery, cidery or wine making enterprise.

Before launching the company in 2014, the founders had been serious about constructing tool for this market enviornment of interest, so that they went round and asked brewers what they had been the usage of to trace their companies. Some had been aesthetic tracking it manually the usage of clipboards and whiteboards. Others had been the usage of ERP tool love SAP, Netsuite or Microsoft Dynamics. Some had been the usage of Google Sheets.

McKinney mentioned he couldn’t judge that there wasn’t a location of tools specifically geared for this market, so he and co-founder and CTO Greg Forehand did what any appropriate entrepreneurs would draw. They constructed it. Nowadays’s product entails an app to trace the enterprise on a cell phone, and the flexibility to location up a coast and tumble workflow for the full operation.

He says he and Forehand in reality came up with the enterprise belief independently. He  grew to grow to be attentive to Forehand in an early sales call. It used to be no doubt outlandish that two of us in the same city came up with the same belief on the same time. Sooner or later the 2 met and determined to affix forces and fabricate a enterprise together.

It turned into out to be a appropriate resolution. Upon launching in 2014, the enterprise took off at the moment. They purchased lined in a brewing industry newsletter,Brewbound, which helped unfold the message. By the pause of the first One year they had 100 breweries on the platform. He mentioned that discover also unfold by discover of mouth, and even in the occasion that they planned on focusing on the US market for starters, earlier than they knew it they had been getting calls from breweries in Canada, Unique Zealand and Australia. Nowadays he says they have got potentialities aesthetic about any negate there might per chance be a brewery across 40 countries.

The corporate currently has 32 staff, including aesthetic two sales of us, who also assist the potentialities with initial setup for his or her particular wants. They’ve expanded from beer to cider to wine, and over time they hope to amplify into other food and alcoholic beverage markets.

McKinney has extra special plans for the money. He wants to hire 40 contemporary staff by the pause of 2020 including sales and advertising other folks, as well to tool engineers. He says he acknowledges that this might per chance per chance per chance very neatly be a extra special alternate for his runt operation, nonetheless it no doubt’s something they have got been planning for and discussing over the closing 8 months as they went thru the course of to accept funding.

“I judge very powerful in being transparent with our crew internally, so that nothing is de facto a surprise. Our crew is handsome pumped about the chance for our potentialities and the things we’re going to acquire, and also getting some contemporary crew participants in negate,” he mentioned.

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