Austin startup Aunt Bertha has landed $5 million to continue building out its database of social services.
The company's website lets people find and apply for social services across the United States. That means people in need, case managers and social workers can access government and charitable services by topic and zip code in seconds.
The basic service, which is free, provides information including the location, hours and reviews of the services, as well as tools to connect with the social services provider.
Aunt Bertha also sells an enterprise version for companies, such as employers of case managers or social workers.
Prior to launching Aunt Bertha, Gray was a City of Austin project manager and worked at Maximus Inc., which developed software projects for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
While there, he got the idea of creating something to provide free information to the public, offer application processing to agencies at a lower cost than they currently spent doing it themselves and making it available in one spot.
"There's almost a paralysis of choice, there's so many choices," Gray told the Statesman in 2011. "People just can't find stuff. They end up getting scared and intimidated. Agencies are bad at creating their own websites."
Gray said the new funding "will help us extend our lead as the number one search and referral platform for social services. We'll also continue to partner with the most innovative health care organizations, community foundations and governments."
The lead investor in the deal was Techstars Ventures, which is the venture capital arm of Techstars, the Boulder, Co., based accelerator program.
Jason Seats, a partner with Techstars Ventures, said the combination of Aunt Bertha's mission to provide social services combined with its ability to generate revenue is what generated investor interest.
"What we liked about Aunt Bertha was that they found a way to provide a valuable service to folks in need but also put together a business model to support it," Seats said. "We were impressed with their customer list, which includes some of the company's most well-respected hospitals, foundations and health insurance companies."
Aunt Bertha received about $1 million from the Social Entrepreneur Fund, based in New York, according to securities filings.
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