SOCi, Inc., a leading SaaS enterprise solution for large-scale social media management has closed an $8.5 million Series A financing to fund its rapidly-growing sales and marketing efforts and to expand its cutting-edge technology development. The round was co-led by Vertical Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based technology fund founded by industry veteran, David Schwab, and Grayhawk Capital, a premier Arizona technology fund led by Managing Partner Sherman Chu.

Additional participants include the Stanford University DAPER fund, Peninsula Ventures, a Bay Area-based enterprise technology venture fund, and Tallwave Capital, an Arizona-based B2B technology venture fund.

Founded in 2012, SOCi solves the difficult workflow challenges faced by multi-location and multi-tenant businesses in social media management. SOCi's powerful platform was architected from inception to address the scalability issues faced by brands and digital marketing agencies that need to manage hundreds or thousands of social media pages. With scalable solutions for content discovery, asset management, peak-time-scheduling, customer care, lead-generation, reporting and analytics, reputation management and half a dozen other features and functionalities, SOCi serves as the infrastructure on which tens of thousands of social media business pages are being managed. SOCi is fully integrated with the top social media and reputation management networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Yelp and others.

"A new day in social media has arrived where large enterprises are finding themselves having to manage hundreds or thousands of local social media pages on behalf of their storefronts, agents, advisors, clients, etc. SOCi's world class engineering team is passionate about solving the difficult workflow management issues faced by these multi-location businesses," says Afif Khoury, CEO of SOCi.

Recently appointed CRO of SOCi, Warren Kay, states, "Efficiency and ROI for social media is key, and we know that SOCi can deliver that to its multi-location and multi-tenant customers. This most recent capital raise will help us grow our user base by scaling our marketing and sales efforts while opening new verticals and channels."

"We were thoroughly impressed with the SOCi team, the sophistication of the platform and the velocity at which their customer base is growing. The breadth of social media has reached an all-time high both in its importance to consumers as well as its adoption by businesses at all levels. SOCi is software infrastructure for the new era of social media management and is integral to an enterprise's efforts to scale their local social media presence." - David Schwab, Founder and Managing Director at Vertical Venture Partners.

About SOCi

SOCi is the leading enterprise solution for social media marketing at scale. SOCi's all-in-one SaaS platform delivers a dozen or more functionalities, including content discovery, business intelligence, lead-generation, approval, task management, mass-scheduling and more, on top of a multi-layered permissions system that is architected to efficiently manage and generate measurable results at scale. For more information, please contact info@meetsoci.com.

About Vertical Venture Partners

Vertical Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investments in companies that target vertical markets. Some vertical markets of interest include: Real Estate, Retail, Healthcare, Transportation, Insurance, Financial Services and Energy. Some technology areas of interest include: analytical applications, cloud applications, mobile, CRM, cyber-security and software infrastructure. Vertical Venture Partners will invest at any stage of a company's growth and can help companies accelerate their business. For more information, interested parties may contact VVP at info@verticalventurepartners.com.

About Grayhawk Capital

Grayhawk Capital is a premier venture capital firm that lends its Partners expertise and management excellence to outstanding early and growth stage companies in the southwest. Along with experience managing eight separate venture funds, totaling more than $500 million with a collective 60+ years of experience, Grayhawk's team is well versed in their investment sectors, including: mobile computing, cloud/SaaS, security, enterprise and application software, business intelligence, healthcare IT, and Fintech. Grayhawk's investment philosophy has remained tried and true throughout the years. Their consistent focus has been to target serial entrepreneurs and exceptional management teams. They are acutely aware of dynamic, rapidly growing technology markets and innovative and disruptive products. Grayhawk Capital is passionate about identifying talent, developing leaders and scaling a business.