St. Pete tech company closes $2.5 million funding round

SavvyPhone LLC has fresh capital for growth.

The company, which does business as SavvyCard, raised $2.5 million, said co-founder and CEO David Etheredge. SavvyCard will use the new capital primarily for sales and marketing, with some capital for updates to the technology platform, he said.

SavvyCard, based in St. Petersburg, is a lead development platform that launched in 2012 as a free, online business card. The company struck a major deal with CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a property information, analytics and data firm, in 2017, and built on that last fall, when it landed the California Regional MLS, the largest multiple listing service in the United States, as a client.

“We’ve got 180,000 realtors on the platform, close to 15 percent of the realtors in North America,” Etheredge told the St. Pete Catalyst.

In April, the company released SavvySigns, a service that makes it easier for consumers to get accurate, factual information on homes for sale through a universal text back number. It’s currently in use in part of North Carolina. The service works for any home for sale in a participating market, and uses Geo Location to deliver relevant information to the consumer.

With the new capital in hand, Etheredge expects to hire two to three more people for sales positions. The firm has 11 full-time employees, said Lisa Nalewak, co-founder and vice president of marketing.

SavvyPhone disclosed a portion of its capital raise in a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, when it said it was seeking $2.5 million and had raised nearly $1.4 million. The company has closed the full round since then.

The new capital came from existing investors, Etheredge said.