HappyCo, a San Francisco-based SaaS startup that originated in Adelaide, has announced the successful completion of a Series A funding round, which raised US$7.5 million (approximately $9.8 million). The funding came from several investors, including 500 Startups, Point Nine, Flight Ventures, and AngelList’s SaaS Syndicate, and brings the company’s total funding to over US$11 million. Jindou Lee, CEO and co-founder of HappyCo, stated that the funding will be used to expand the engineering and sales teams and grow the customer base by entering new verticals. HappyCo’s suite of products helps companies manage their operations by providing real-time auditing and business intelligence tools, allowing them to improve their key performance indicators. Lee said that the funding validates the business model and technology and will enable HappyCo to scale the business and help more organizations succeed in today’s competitive data-driven economy.
In 2011, HappyCo was founded as Happy Landlord, a system that aimed to assist property managers and landlords in managing their properties. Happy Landlord later evolved into Happy Inspector, an app that replaced paper forms and allowed users to take photos during inspections. After joining Sydney accelerator Startmate in 2012 and taking part in the 500 Startups program, the Happy Inspector system expanded to cater to different types of paper-based inspections, audits, and checklists for various industries that rely on paper forms. HappyCo now offers three products: Happy Manage, Happy Inspector, and Happy BI, a business intelligence solution. The startup has more than 8,000 clients, including Marriott International and Westfield, and has facilitated over 1.3 million inspections in the past five years, with users taking more than 20 million inspection photos. Nathan Creswell, a partner at Flight Ventures and cofounder of the SaaS Syndicate, praised HappyCo for having one of the most exciting real estate SaaS success stories he has seen. Creswell also noted the startup’s mobile app’s best-in-breed feature and ease of deployment, which made it the preferred platform for forward-thinking enterprises worldwide.
