Analytics optimization startup Nextmv just closed a seed round

Less than a year after its launch, Philly-founded distributed optimization startup Nextmv has raised its first significant round of fundraising: a $2.7 million seed round.

The cofounders — CEO Carolyn Mooney and CTO Ryan O’Neil — are alumni of startups Zoomer and Grubhub, where they built the algorithms to consolidate and automate deliveries and managed large distributed teams.

Optimization factors into most work; think the algorithm behind package shipping, making an employee schedule or how a restaurant goes about making deliveries. Many systems that are done manually can really be set to automatic.

It got them thinking: There’s a lot about tech optimization that could be brought into the future, Mooney said.

“Both of our disciplines were a little antiquated, and we were passionate about bringing them into a more modern tech space,” she added.

So, Nextmv was born in July 2019 with the goal of making a developers-first platform for logistics optimization that was accessible for folks who weren’t specifically trained in it.

It’ll help with the logistics of what Mooney called “manual chaos,” or the unorganization that can come from a human having to plan decisions in a system. The Nextmv software essentially helps maximize any KPIs — food order to door delivery, or costs and time spent on shipping, Mooney said.

The company launched last summer with Mooney and O’Neil leading it, and has since added Head of Revenue Andrew Hoagland, who wrote about shutting down his startup Vetd early this year. They’ve since brought the headcount up to six people total, including some tech and sales talent, and about half of the team is based in Philadelphia.

The seed raise, lead by Dynamo Ventures and FirstMark, will give the team a solid runway during the impending recession and allow them to get a good foothold in the logistics sector, Mooney said. In total, including some earlier investing, the company’s raised $3.4 million.

Along with the announcement of the fundraise comes a brand-new website this week.

The CEO said that she wants analytics optimization to become as ubiquitous as data science in the near future.

“It allows you to have really good information to make really solid decision frameworks,” Mooney said. “It’s hard for humans to understand the impact of a single decision.”