5 on Funding with Ben and Matt Rubin, Co-Founders of SnoFox

Welcome to 5 on Funding! This weekly newsletter asks venture-backed startups 5 detailed ways they plan to use the new funding to scale their companies.

Quick Facts About SnoFox

Company Description: SnoFox data analytics optimizes energy consumption in cold industrial spaces. By integrating existing facility data with a custom-built digital twin, SnoFox's platform delivers insights into the root causes of system inefficiencies within cold storage warehouses. This innovative approach empowers facilities to identify specific areas where energy is being wasted, enabling them to implement data-driven changes for a more sustainable cold chain.

Industry: Cold chain 

Amount Raised: $4.5m, end of Q1 2023

What 5 things will you do with this funding?

Key Priority for Funding: Growing from pre-seed to an operationalized business

1. Hiring the technical teams: Software and product

“We went out to raise this round of funding from a point of strength and momentum. We had just done our very first SaaS deployment. Very quickly, our customers asked for us to 10x our deployments across warehouses, so we needed to raise money to execute and hire the team across two parallel tracks. 

One is a software team: an absolute state-of-the-art product team that can do the product, engineering, and coding.”

2. Hiring the technical teams: Mechanical engineering

“At the same time, recruiting the hard-to-find and hard-to-attract talent pool of mechanical engineers who understand refrigeration or any large energy system. We're working with folks who come from the nuclear power plant world, for example.”

3. Operationalizing the company

“We went from this pre-seed company where there were truly no rules, very little process, everybody's doing everything: execute, then ask questions later. Going from being a company of five people who have a great idea to being a proper company with established processes and operations, that’s where we wanted to go.”

4. Investing in travel 

“We’re a covid company that started in the summer of 2020. Everyone was remote then, so we're remote by nature, which served us well for a long time. We were able to meet one of our co-founders because he took a Zoom meeting with us. That probably wouldn't have happened had it not been covid times. And the same goes for a lot of our early customer introductions.

As the team grows and the operations become a little more demanding, there's a real need for the team to meet in person. I don't think we realized this until we did it for the first time, and we were blown away by how productive this one-week all-hands meeting was. So now we do a quarterly work week in New York City. And if there’s an important sprint happening or folks feel like they need to sync on something, we’ll get on trains and planes to New York and meet in our coworking space.”

5. Investing in PR

“Investing in our PR and media presence with BAM has been so important for us. We could get some traction with very little outreach, and that’s good only to a certain extent. We needed to get our acts together and have a real online presence. It feels like a new era of SnoFox when people can Google us and see that we have a material impact.” 

About the founders: 

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of SnoFox Sciences. Prior to starting SnoFox, Ben worked for a New York City-based consulting firm focusing on strategy and technology projects for State and Local Governments. He is an alumnus of New York University where he majored in political science and English Literature and Minored in American Sign Language. Ben is an amateur chef and a very slow distance runner and triathlete.

Matthew Rubin is the COO and co-founder of SnoFox Sciences. Prior to starting SnoFox, Matt was responsible for go-to-market strategy and execution at venture-backed, early-stage startups in the enterprise SaaS market. In Matt’s free time, he enjoys exploring the New England coast and wilderness as well as considers himself an expert Wayfair furniture assembler.