Avid Ratings, a Madison WI-based real estate software company that has been operating since 1992 but is now seeking to fuel its growth with cash from venture capital investors, says it has raised $6 million as part of a Series A funding round.
Residential construction businesses are the primary users of Avid’s technology, which the company says can help them market to—and manage relations with—customers who are interested in building or remodeling a home.
Avid says it current roster of clients includes more than 2,000 residential construction firms in the U.S. and Canada.
4490 Ventures, a Madison-based VC fund, and the Detroit-based private equity firm Beringea led the round, Avid says.
Avid says it plans to use some of the proceeds from the funding round to add up to 100 people to its workforce over the next two years. The company currently has 28 employees, according to LinkedIn. Avid says it plans to expand its product development, sales, and marketing teams, among others.
Paul Cardis founded Avid in 1992 and continues to lead the company as CEO. (Avid was originally called NRS Corp., but changed its name in 2007.) Cardis says in a news release announcing the new funding round that his company’s technology is designed for “measuring building quality and maximizing homebuyer satisfaction across North America.”
Avid says it also plans to revamp its survey tools, which construction companies that license Avid’s software can use to solicit customer feedback before, during, and after the homebuilding or remodeling process. Information collected in these surveys can help homebuilders ensure they’re complying with local and federal building restrictions, Avid says.
“The addition of these new capabilities will help builders be more competitive by responding faster and smarter to customer feedback,” Aaron Everson, Avid’s president, says in the release.
Avid hired Everson earlier this year. He was most recently a vice president at Austin, TX-based Spredfast, which recently merged with Lithium Technologies. Everson joined Spredfast in 2015 after it bought Shoutlet, a Madison-based developer of software for managing social media campaigns, for an undisclosed sum.
Another member of Avid’s leadership team who recently joined the company is chief technology officer Brian Nelson. Nelson says he previously worked at Spredfast as its vice president of engineering, but left that position in late 2017. He also worked at Shoutlet before it was sold to Spredfast, Avid says.
