One of the first startups to graduate from the Master of Business Creation (MBC) program at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, Cinch just raised a $3 million seed-stage financing round to grow its marketing automation software.
Founder Justin Rae, CEO, enrolled in the MBC program in 2019-2020, the inaugural year for the award-winning program that helps founders grow their businesses. Rae said the program gave them the support they needed to get to where they are today.
“I have a massive amount of gratitude for the Master of Business Creation program from the University of Utah and the mentors I met through that degree, especially Paul Brown, Taft Price, and Jack Brittain,” Rae said.
The seed round was led by Lionel Ventures, located in Orem Utah, with a significant investment from Cultivation Capital in St. Louis. They helped Cinch exceed their initial plan to raise $1.5 million.
“We got to over $1M in ARR (annual recurring revenue) and profitable with just our small team and limited resources for sales and marketing,” Rae said. “We have an incredible product-market fit that made it happen.”
Cinch is a tool that allows businesses to automate a wide variety of business processes with a no-code interface and provides a data-enriched, personalized marketing approach to small- and medium-sized companies, finding new customers and win back the old ones while still providing quality service to existing customers. Features of the software include email communication, texting, customer data profiles, digital ad audience management, direct mail, consumer data platform and more.
With the seed round behind them, Cinch now wants to grow their team to meet their next goals.
“I’m looking to build our go-to-market team,” Rae said. “We need a lead-generation master to help build our marketing team. Anyone that knows what it takes to get a company from $1 million in ARR to $10 million in ARR in 18 months or less message me and join our story. If you are or know any good storytellers, marketing content creators, graphic designers, UI/UX people, we need you today.”
The MBC program is provided by the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the Eccles School with support from the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute. The nine-month program is entirely focused on founder’s startups. They receive scholarships, grants, mentorship, focused academic lessons and more to help them get to the next level.
Learn more about Cinch at cinch.io.
Learn more about the Master of Business Creation program and apply to join the program at eccles.utah.edu/mbc.
