A new partnership with banking giant JP Morgan gives York IE, a Manchester-based advisory and investment firm, more fuel to rev up technology startups.
The partnership is significant on a couple of levels, according to Adam Coughlin, cofounder, chief marketing officer and managing partner at York IE.
“We really want to be that one-stop shop that tech companies can go to for help, and that’s why that relationship with JP Morgan is interesting, because there are going to be things that we do really well. But then it’s also very important for us to have an ecosystem of partners that we can recommend who do those complementary things that aren’t our core competency,” Coughlin said.
The partnership also demonstrates a willingness by JP Morgan, known more for its legacy investments, to get involved in the burgeoning tech industry, according to Coughlin.
“It’s a great opportunity for both of us, too, because we have a great network and reputation in the startup community. They have a great reputation, just in general, and it’s a win-win of both of us working together,” Coughlin said. “The team that we’re working with out of their Boston office really matches our ethos, which is do whatever you can to help those companies succeed.”
An example of how the collaboration works can be found in Winrate. Using Slack (a cloud-based messaging app that helps teams collaborate and communicate in real time), Winrate enables sellers and buyers to collaborate and share information. Winrate is headed up by Steve Travaglini.
In the partnership, York IE provides hands-on, tech-enabled support to Winrate in the areas of product strategy and development, messaging and website development, and finance and corporate strategy. JP Morgan provides Winrate with treasury services, payments and billing solutions, along with access to insights and technology bankers.
Celebrating its fifth anniversary, York IE was founded by people who had worked at Dyn, the former internet performance management company in Manchester that was purchased and absorbed by Oracle.
Coughlin spent more than seven years at Dyn and then Oracle doing corporate communications, including public relations, analyst relations, investor relations, speakers bureau and internal communications.
He explained that York IE has two parts: its advisory services side and its investment side. According to Coughlin, a company in which York IE invests will use its advisory services, but using the advisory services is not contingent on investment.
So far in its five years, said Coughlin, York IE has invested about $50 million across 71 investments in 54 companies. “We’ve made multiple investments in some companies,” he noted. “We talk to about 10,000 companies in a year to make 10 investments.”
Startup investments have been made throughout the United States, in Canada and in Europe, but they have a natural bias toward New Hampshire, said Coughlin.
An example of a York IE investment is Terrantic, a data operations platform for the food supply chain. Announced in August, the investment in the Seattle-based company enables it to continue helping food processing companies minimize food waste and improve yield by optimizing their supply chain operations and ensuring their products reach their destination at their best quality, according to the company.
“We have a fantastic investment team, and they have a very thorough sort of investment process that they run of due diligence,” said Coughlin. Fellow co-founders Kyle York, chief executive officer, and Joe Raczka, chief investment officer, worked together at Dyn.
“Both Kyle York and Joe Raczka were doing a lot of angel investment, and we had already built a very strong ecosystem of relationships that led to our companies that we invested in,” Coughlin said. “Now, through five years of just doing really good, thoughtful work on both the investment side and the advisory side, that network continues to expand.”
A sign of York IE’s growth is its February ranking on the Inc. 5000, the annual list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States compiled by Inc.
Magazine. With three-year revenue growth of 493%, York IE ranked 1,031.
York IE looks for potential equity when it invests in a startup. “You’re investing capital for equity, and that equity becomes valuable with the success of the company,” Coughlin said. “That’s why we’ve always been very pro-entrepreneur because what is successful for the founder and the company that they build becomes successful for us as the investor.”
The technology industry continues as dynamic as ever, said Coughlin, perhaps even more so during and since the COVID pandemic that forced more reliance on software and technologies to help people navigate a new working environment.
“As people began to work remotely, the need for those kinds of tools and communication and all of those things only became more important,” Coughlin said.
“America is the greatest country in the world because of innovation and entrepreneurs willing to take risks,” Coughlin added.
“And that’s not an easy thing to do. How can you support them, and I think we are trying to do that.”
