Company using investment to bring never before seen innovations to the death-care industry
CINCINNATI – June XX, 2018 – Queen City Angels today announced a new investment in CRäKN, a cloud-based software solution that helps funeral directors manage day-to-day operations in order to streamline operations, prevent errors, and save time. This is the second investment in CRäKN for QCA, which provided early-stage funding for the company in June 2017. The new round of funding includes investment from QCA and QCA members, as well as funds from industry professionals and from Canadian investors. More than half the funds were from outside the United States.
CRäKN plans to use the funds to continue rounding out the product, bringing new innovations to the funeral home industry, and for marketing support to help increase awareness for the company’s technology. The company is also hiring developers, customer success personnel and sales professionals. Many of the operational hires will be based in Cincinnati, while the sales team will be located throughout the country.
“Our software makes funeral directors’ lives much easier, so they can focus on families and providing a great experience for them, and less time on other business details,” said Scott Mindrum, president and CEO of CRäKN. “The industry is ripe for innovation, and we are finding customers and prospective customers who have been waiting for technology like ours to help them be more efficient and provide excellent service. Funeral directors are notorious world-class jugglers. CRäKN gives them more arms to manage every aspect of their businesses.”
Mindrum added, “As a member of QCA, I have a unique perspective on the angel group. Terry Wright with QCA has been awesome, jumping in whenever we need help. He has gone above and beyond a typical angel investor, accompanying us to investigate new technology, and helping us figure out pricing and marketing strategies. We appreciate QCA’s commitment to CRäKN and the local entrepreneurial community.”
Prior to CRäKN, most funeral directors managed their interactions with customers with pens and paper forms. Often, doing arrangement forms by hand led to duplicated efforts, as information was entered into various systems. On average, the name of the deceased is written more than 50 times when planning funerals. This increases the opportunity for spelling mistakes, transposition errors and inaccurate filings. CRäKN eliminates these manual processes, and the new innovations will increase efficiencies even further.
“The past year we have seen a lot of innovation coming from CRäKN, and we are excited for the industry’s response as the new technologies are released later this year,” said Wright. “The company has doubled down on mobile capabilities and is doing things that no one in the industry is doing; all of which bodes well for CRäKN’s near and long-term success.”
About Queen City Angels
The Queen City Angels (QCA) is a group of more than 50 experienced accredited investors who provide funding, support and guidance to early-stage growth companies in the Cincinnati area and surrounding region. QCA members, which include former C-level executives and entrepreneurs, draw from their personal operating and management experience to evaluate opportunities and provide on-going mentoring to young businesses with exceptional growth potential. Since 2000, QCA members have directly invested approximately $50 million in nearly 80 portfolio companies. The total capital invested in these companies, including QCA members’ capital, syndication partners’ capital, follow-on venture capital funds and venture debt is in excess of $410 million. CB Insight recently ranked QCA second out of 370 national angel organizations. For additional information, visit www.qca.com.
About CRäKN
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