Denim, a Des Moines-based mobile marketing startup for financial services, has merged with Gremlin Social, a 12-year-old St. Louis technology firm and adopted the new name Denim Social.
The merger brings together Denim’s advertising and marketing automation platform with Gremlin Social’s social media marketing tools. Gregory Bailey from Denim will become President and Chief Product Officer and Doug Wilber from Gremlin will be CEO.
“Doug and I have had an ongoing mutual friendship and have been in conversation for almost two years,” said Bailey. “Q4 of last year our conversations got a little more purposeful and directed, specific to what it would look like to bring our businesses together.”
The combined company has office locations in Des Moines, St. Louis and Birmingham, Alabama.
“Our team will remain in the Des Moines metro and we also have a presence in Birmingham, Alabama with our CTO being located there,” said Bailey “We’re very focused on keeping our posture going forward as a business that’s very open to remote opportunities.”
$4 Million Series A Fundraiser
The merger comes with a $4 million Series A fundraiser. The raised money will go towards hiring, product expansion and building market share.
The $4 million investment in Denim Social was led by Hermann Cos., a St. Louis-based holding company. As part of the Series A Raise, Rick Holten Jr. with Hermann Cos. will be joining Denim Social’s Board.
“That’s exciting for us. Rick has a deep background in scaling business-to-business fintech companies like ours,” said Bailey.
Denim Social now has more than 20 employees and is now hiring for engineering, sales, marketing and other positions. Over the next 12 months, Denim Social plans to expand its team by about forty to fifty percent, Bailey told Clay & Milk. The company also has product enhancements and product expansion on the roadmap that it plans to use some of the raised capital for.
“We’ve got some amazing new products in our pipeline that we’re excited to get into the hands of our customers in the next weeks. It’s not going to be long before we’re making announcements about those,” said Bailey. “We’re not wasting any time on the product front and are excited to ring a lot of additional value to the market.”
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