A Victory Lap, Compliance Company on a Hot Streak, and Crypto is Back (maybe)

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In this week’s spotter:

• A success story 🏆️

• Compliance company does 7x more hiring

• A crypto company that isn’t a fraudulent scam (?)

• A startup helping retail companies

A Victory Lap

In our first issue ever, we highlighted a company called Memfault; they are a monitoring platform for IoT devices (kind of like “DataDog for IoT”).

On December 13, we saw a spike in their job posts that made us think they could be fundraising; here is the chart we published:

That’s a huge increase in job posts. It’s one that made us know something was going on at Memfault.

Fast forward 6 weeks to January 24, and what do we have here??:

Memfault raised $24 million! Sorry Techcrunch, startup spotter readers knew about it a month and a half ago.

If you want to be months behind, stick with Techcrunch; otherwise, keep reading startup spotter. And order yourself an “I scooped Techcrunch” t-shirt:

Wilco

Compliance might be an unsexy market compared to generative AI, but…

1. It’s a large market; every single business has laws they need to comply with.

2. The need for compliance never stops, so you can have customers forever.

If you can develop a compliance solution that solves a pain point well, you really can have lifetime customers, which is the kind of story that makes investors happy.

And which leads us to the first company we’re highlighting…

ComplYant is startup that help business manage their tax compliance.

If you run a business, there are all kinds of taxes you need to manage: income taxes, sales taxes, business licensing fees, etc., etc. Managing them is hard and the penalties for missing deadlines can be steep.

ComplYant gives business owners a simple dashboard to track the taxes they owe and makes sure they color within the lines of the law.

Most importantly, it looks like things are going well for ComplYant; look at this recent increase in their open job posts:

• January 5: 1 open job

• January 29: 7 open jobs

That’s a 7x increase in a few weeks! They hired a recruiter back in October, so we’re seeing the effect of that now with a huge increase in hiring.

The bottom line is that things are going well for ComplYant. They’ve raised $5.7mm to date; reach out to their CEO Shiloh Johnson if you don’t want to miss their next round.

As always, we’ve added this company to our dealflow spreadsheet, which you can find here. Take a look, all of the past companies we’ve highlighted are there, tell your friends 👀

A Crypto Company??

Wait, come back! Don’t leave just because we’re talking crypto in the middle of crypto winter!

Though it might seem like a pretty rough time for crypto, Token Metrics might be bucking the trend.

Token Metrics provides data and research for crypto traders. They’re a classic “selling shovels” company; whether crypto is up or down, traders need research to fuel their somewhat-questionable trading decisions.

And it’s actually possible they’ve been running the company wisely, which would be a nice change of pace from the cast of criminals running web3 companies we’ve seen lately.

Take a look at their chart of open job posts:

• May 5, 2022: 20 open jobs

• November 26, 2022: 30 open jobs

• January 28, 2023: 93 open jobs (!!!)

There are a couple things to note here:

1. A lot of crypto companies’ number of open job posts completely tanked in May/June 2022; we’re talking going from 50 open jobs suddenly to 0. This is because they were overhiring and had to abruptly stop when the market went south. But Token Metrics’ open job posts did not follow this trend. They did a little bit of hiring and overall stayed pretty stable, so it’s likely they weren’t overhiring like so many of their peers were.

2. They are currently in the middle of a huge spike in open job posts. Going from 30 to 93 is a large spike in 2 months.

This is good news on all fronts. It’s likely that Token Metrics managed the winter better than most, and they’re bouncing back nicely now with a big round of hiring even in a still-not-great market.

And they’ve only raised $4.5mm to date, which is a relatively small amount given the level of hiring they’re doing.

Token Metrics seems like a diamond in the rough in a market full of fool’s gold. Contact their CEO, Ian Balina, if you’d like to learn more.

Token Metrics is in the dealflow spreadsheet too, FYI

This Machine Gives Quotes

There are 32.5 million small businesses in the US alone, and if you told all of them that they could increase their sales tomorrow, chances are they’d shout at you, “Tell me how!!”

QuoteMachine is giving small business owners a way with their software platform.

Their software provides everything needed so retail small businesses can give customers a super high quality digital experience; from order fulfillment, to email marketing, to invoices, they bring smooth UX to the retail business world.

And their platform plugs into existing sales platforms; businesses don’t need a new point-of-sale system or e-commerce store, QuoteMachine works with everything they already have, which makes adoption much easier.

It looks like their product is resonating with customers; take a look at this recent increase in open job posts:

• January 1: 1 open job

• January 26: 7 open jobs

For those keeping track at home, this is another 7x job post increase! Just like ComplYant, business appears to be going very well for QuoteMachine.

But QuoteMachine has only raised $1mm (CAD) to date; you have the opportunity to get in even earlier here.

Contact their CEO JD Rocheteau if you’re interested in hopping aboard the train.

And…Scene!

We hope you enjoyed this week’s spotter! Just sayin’, our premium subscribers saw 10 more companies including:

• A data syncing company that doubled job posts

• An analytics company that tripled job posts

• And more!

If you want better startup dealflow, inquire about our premium offering here.

How’d we do this week? Anything you would have liked to have seen? Hit reply and let us know!

Until next week my friend,

- startup spotter