Cape Town-headquartered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup Magnetic Software is planning a launch in the United States (US) by the middle of this year after closing two funding rounds in the last twelve months.
Magnetic was founded in 2012 after spotting an opportunity to create an all-in-one solution for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to manage their business processes, and provides a cloud-based SaaS platform focusing on sales, CRM, project management, accounts and human resources.
Chief executive officer (CEO) Daniel Marcus, who runs the business alongside co-founders Korak Kuhnert and Jan Pickard, told Disrupt Africa the startup began making sales in the middle of 2013 and has since gone through two funding rounds and acquired clients in Kenya, Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). A US launch is planned for mid-2015.
“In just over a year we have grown to 80 paying companies with an average of 15 users per company,” he said. “We’ve recently closed a second angel investment round after closing our first in January through Tim Bishop.”
Though Marcus said he could not yet reveal the identity of the second investor, he said the two funding rounds had given Magnetic an “incredible valuation” for an early-stage business launched in Cape Town.
The startup charges a per user per month subscription fee of US$20, and reports a six-fold increase in revenues since January 2014.
“We built Magnetic due to our frustration of not being able to manage our business in one simple to use platform. There was no single cost effective solution for SMEs. Most of our competitors focus on single verticals, such as sales and project management,” Marcus said.
“We built Magnetic for SMEs to help them become more efficient and to give business owners a bird’s eye view into their businesses from anywhere at any time.”
