HeyOrca has landed $2 million in equity funding, allowing it to ramp up its fast-growing content-planning business.

The St. John’s company that makes collaborative software for marketing agencies announced this morning that it received $2 million in funding from previous investors  Killick Capital and Pelorus Venture Capital. This takes the company’s total equity funding to $2.65 million.

The company has been gaining a lot of buzz lately because its monthly recurring revenue has been increasing rapidly, so it was known to be attracting interest from investors. The statement today said its customer base has increased 800 percent in the past year, adding 160 new businesses. The customers listed on its website include Saatchi & Saatchi, Microsoft Studios, Hilton Head Island and TheSocialDiner.   

“At HeyOrca, we differ from other social media planning tools because we focus on the client communications aspect of content planning,” said Co-Founder and Chief Executive Joe Teo in the statement. “We allow agencies to be an extension of their client’s team. HeyOrca streamlines the client-approval process, making it dead simple for everyone to be on the same page.”

Co-founded by Teo and CTO Sahand Seifi in 2015, HeyOrca has developed software that helps agencies to work with their clients in the planning and approving social media content. 

The company previously raised $650,000 in a round led by Pelorus (which manages the Venture NL fund) and Killick. That round included a $150,000 contribution by BDC Capital. HeyOrca qualified for BDC funding because it had gone through Propel ICT’s Build program – the first Newfoundland and Labrador company to do so.

The funding is the largest by a Newfoundland company since Sequence Bio raised US$3 million in a round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Data Collective last August.

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With the new funding, Teo said HeyOrca will expand in the U.S. market and grow its product and sales teams. The company plans to double its headcount this year to 30 to support its growth.

There is no shortage of startups producing software for marketing agencies, but HeyOrca differentiates itself by focusing on the way small independent agencies communicate with their clients.

The company said a recent study conducted by RPA found that 88 percent of agency clients claim to speak their minds freely, but only 36 percent of agencies agree. What’s more, 90 percent of agencies say they truly understand their clients’ business, but only 65 percent of their clients agree.  HeyOrca describes it as “a situation revealing that the client-agency relationship can be (and often is) dysfunctional at best.”

HeyOrca allows agencies to generate visual mock-ups of social media content and centralize all client approvals and feedback in one place.

“Managing the client communication process without introducing micromanagement and scope creep is one of the biggest challenges facing marketing agencies,” said Teo. “The secret to keeping clients in the loop without losing control lies in drawing a clear line between what falls within the scope of client review and what doesn’t. HeyOrca gives agencies the freedom to choose what their clients need to review while providing them with the necessary context for their next campaign.”

HeyOrca was recently added to the Top 10 social tools to consider by app review site G2 Crowd, which the company said shows it is holding its own against industry veterans like Hootsuite and SproutSocial.