Whenever I run into something that’s oddly hard to define, I usually take a beat. And something about marketing tech, or martech, has always felt abstract to me—if martech is all the tech tools that marketers need, then don’t thousands of things (whether built for marketing or not) fit into that category?
So, I was curious about marketing automation company Soci, stylized as SOCi and pronounced "soh-shee." The startup's been around for more than a decade and it provides a platform for multi-location companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Ace Hardware to manage their social media, search, reviews, and other digital marketing channels.
In 2023, Soci raised a $120 million round, led by JMI Equity, of both debt and equity to fuel its expansion. Those expansion plans are yielding results: Soci has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, Fortune can exclusively report. Soci's other investors include Vertical Venture Partners and Blossom Street Ventures, and the company has raised $240 million to date.
Soci hasn't been an overnight growth story. The company was founded in 2012, amid a 2010's boom in which investors were extensively backing martech names like Sprinklr and Marketo. (Sprinklr went public in a 2021 IPO that missed the mark, and Marketo was acquired in 2018 by Adobe for $4.75 billion.) Today, amid the AI boom, martech seems equally set up to either benefit enormously in this new wave—or get dusted. Soci says its AI products, like social media-focused Genius Social, are helping the company barrel forward.
"AI is coming," said Afif Khoury, Soci CEO and cofounder. "It’s going to make things worse, and it’s going to make things better. What’s really cool is that we’ve held on long enough now to see yet another crazy inflection point in marketing. We had the mobile revolution. Now, we have the AI revolution. It’s going to make us want information faster—and be a little more frustrated when we can't get what we want."
Soci currently has about 1,000 customers and manages three million locations for companies like Jersey Mike's and Dick’s. Khoury says that there are all sorts of industries the company hasn’t yet tapped into.
"We have the rest of the world to go sell to,” he told Term Sheet. “We have verticals we’ve just started to enter and we’re going deeper into, like financial services, insurance, and healthcare…So, from a TAM perspective, it’s massive.”
Khoury wasn't especially keen on pinning an exact number on the total addressable market, and neither did JMI Equity general partner Suken Vakil, who says it's a "multibillion-dollar TAM." But what Vakil did help me understand is this: The opportunity for Soci, or any growing martech startup, is that the sector is fragmented, much like marketing functions themselves are fragmented.
"There are few companies that can provide a single integrated solution that spans multiple martech categories, serving both local and national marketing needs, and integrate AI in a way that automates essential business processes and workflows," Vakil said via email.
And that’s seemingly Soci’s opportunity today and tomorrow—to simplify something that, though definable, is diffuse.
Elsewhere…The Fed yesterday held rates at their current 20-year high, but the rumblings of a possible rate cut are growing louder. Eyes on September, folks. For my fellow recreational Fed watchers: What do you think this means for deals and exits? Send me your thoughts!
On Amazon…My colleague Jason Del Rey just published a feature on how Amazon’s famed management rules and practices (remember the two-pizza rule?) are faring under Andy Jassy’s tenure. It’s a fascinating piece about how the intellectual lineage of a company dilutes and evolves over time. Read the whole story here.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
