We’re excited to welcome SurveyLocal to the Lighter Capital portfolio and family.
SurveyLocal provides an intelligent software platform to help small businesses easily collect a large amount of feedback from their customers. The company collects feedback via quick customer surveys, and uses that input to promote businesses across the web on third-party websites, as well as in local markets via their consumer network.
SurveyLocal was founded to address a pain point CEO Chad Williams experienced as a small business owner: negative customer reviews. Online reviews have a major impact on search engine rankings, and real customer reviews help businesses get discovered online by more new customers. A single negative review can quickly affect a small business’ momentum and prospective customer sentiment.
A key part of SurveyLocal’s offering is their ability to provide their subscribers with immediate customer experience feedback tied to known variables such as staff or customer history. Businesses receive positive and negative customer feedback, so they’re able to act quickly and better manage their online reputation.
Based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, SurveyLocal was founded in 2013 by CEO and serial entrepreneur Chad Williams through an incubator at the University of Texas. The company plans to use the Lighter Capital funding to grow in two key ways: 1) demonstrating momentum to potential investors, and 2) dramatically scaling their business.
“Rather than grow very slowly and organically over the next few years, we want to capture as much market share as quickly as possible, which is what this funding will allow us to do,” says Williams.
SurveyLocal plans to raise additional funding, and Williams says that receiving funding from sources such as Lighter Capital shows investors that the company has traction and is a solid investment.
“The biggest piece of feedback we got from Angel investors was that they want to see some investment and significant interest before they jump on board,” he notes.
Williams said one of the biggest benefits of using a RevenueLoan to fund their growth is saving time. He anticipates they’ll trim at least 2-3 months off their fundraising cycle. “The biggest enemy of the entrepreneur is wasting time,” he says. “In a startup world, you need to be focused on helping your business quickly move forward.”
Now SurveyLocal will be able to help more small businesses maintain their online reviews by providing them with a platform to quickly engage and increase sales, further positioning SurveyLocal well for incoming investors. Congratulations to SurveyLocal—we’re looking forward to watching them grow.