A developer of an automated social media marketing service has secured a second round of funding, this time for $700,000. Serious Social Media is a 2016 graduate of the Des Moines, Iowa-based Global Insurance Accelerator program.
The funding was led by Grinnell, Iowa-based Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co. and also included West Des Moines, Iowa-based IMT Group.
InsuranceSocial.Media is the flagship product of Serious Social Media, which has locations in Anaheim and Iowa. The software, launched in July, is for insurance agents and carriers. It provides personalized content and posts it, along with content from insurance carriers, automatically to agents’ social media platforms.
“Many of our independent agents are eager to market through social media but do not have the staffing or resources to keep an active social media presence,” said Kurt Eaves, Grinnell Mutual’s vice president of underwriting and production and a mentor at the accelerator.
The Des Moines-based accelerator focuses on developing and growing innovative, insurance-based startups. It’s in its third year and is backed by insurer investors from across the U.S.
Des Moines is home to more than 80 insurance companies and tens of thousands of insurance professionals.
Firm Seeks Funding
A startup that caters to companies interested in buying or selling commercial design services is looking to raise $500,000 in seed money.
Dezignwall Inc., based in the Eureka co-working building in Irvine, provides a social platform for various enterprises—including commercial products manufacturers, architects and design firms—to share photos of their products and projects, with the goal of helping them increase sales and compete in a global economy.
Founder and Chief Executive Joseph Haecker said he’s turned down $6 million in outside funding since he launched the company in January because in his opinion, VC money wouldn’t help advance the company strategically.
He’s now looking for angel investors to help him bolster a data infrastructure to support his platform, which is slated to add 450 manufacturers and more than 1 million images.
Haecker said he ultimately wants to raise $300 million to support international growth and advanced features to better serve the commercial design community.
Eureka Founder in Wales
More news from the Eureka Building: Founder Peter Polydor will join the faculty of the University of Wales as a professor of practice in innovation and enterprise. He recently obtained an MBA from an accelerated, one-year program at Oxford University in England.
He’s also been working with the vice chancellor and his team at the university, advising them on developing an innovation campus in downtown Swansea, Wales, called SA1, and is in discussions with them on future projects that he said are too early in development to disclose.
“Wales is making a big push to differentiate themselves in not only the U.K. but in Europe,” he said.
Partnership Helps Students
And good culture—also based in the Eureka Building—has partnered with Washington, D.C.-based The Campus Kitchens Project for this school year to help students fight hunger by eliminating food waste.
Good culture makes organic cottage cheese. Campus Kitchens partners with high schools, colleges and universities to share on-campus kitchen space, recover unused food from cafeterias, and use student volunteers to prepare and deliver meals to children and families in the local community.
Good culture is donating 1% of the sale of every cup of its cottage cheese to Campus Kitchens throughout this school year. The funds will help provide healthy meals to students of all ages who receive free or reduced-price lunches during the summer.
Tech for Brokers
A startup that helps other companies save time finding commercial real estate is piloting artificial intelligence software and getting positive reviews.
Digsy is a free, on-demand “butler” service aimed at helping startups and midsized businesses in their real estate searches.
It plans to license the soon-to-be-released software to commercial real estate brokerages to “intelligently run their sales teams and help them sell more with less effort,” co-founder and Chief Executive Andrew Bermudez said.
“We’re seeing [double] the improvement in sales performance with agents testing our platform,” he said.
Jeff Hakim, managing partner of Tustin brokerage firm iCore Global, is trying it out.
“It is exciting technology that has helped my team and me to close more deals,” Hakim said via email. “Their predictive sales intelligence is extremely effective in managing our entire sales cycle. This has allowed us to be more effective brokers and provide greater service to our clients, which in turn has resulted in more opportunities and increased revenue.
“I’ve tried implementing a few other technologies into my brokerage firm but prefer the Digsy platform because it really is an intelligent sales management system that improves the way we are doing business.”
