Manufacturing process management platform Factory has raised $4.69 million in a Series A for its US ambitions.
The round was led by Shearwater Capital, with support from US investor Martin Tobias and existing backers Investible, Adrian DiMarco and Beachhead Capital .
The Sydney software startup previously raised $1.05 million in a 2023 Seed round led by Investible.
Factory helps fabrication and manufacturing businesses manage jobs from quote to delivery and purchasing.
The capital will be used to increase product and engineering capacity, expand the go-to-market team,
and for US expansion, kicking off in Texas.
Brothers Paul and Michael Lutkajtis founded Factory in 2021, inspired by their own family’s fabrication business.
“This is an industry that’s been left behind in many ways by the tech sector, predominantly because it’s heavily misunderstood,” said Paul, the CEO, said.
“We found that 93% or so of businesses in the manufacturing space have fewer than 20 employees. So it was an industry massively dominated by small businesses, yet all we could find were tools that were made for that 7% enterprise style business.”
Global customers
The Factory platform is built for small and medium-sized sheet metal fabrication shops and the CEO, who is relocating to Texas as part of the expansion plans said users have the ability to customise it for their needs.
The five-year-old Sydney startup now has more than 200 customers in Australia, along with users in North America and the UK.
Paul Lutkajtis said he’s not phased by the wild policy swings of the US government as they take on that market
“We spent two weeks in Texas driving up and down from Dallas to San Antonio, visiting fabrication shops and everyone we spoke to said you could not pick a better place to come right now than right here, especially Texas,” he said.
“Even with things like tariffs, the overarching theme was that the industry was going to be bolstered by the administration’s focus on domestic production.”
