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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowWeeks Communications Inc., which does business as Fathom Voice, is in the midst of raising $4 million from investors, according to public filings, and its CEO plans to pick up the hiring pace after announcing a prominent state official will join its top brass.
The Broad Ripple-based company, which sells cloud-based enterprise phone systems, employs about 50 and plans to nearly double that figure by the end of the year. Jacob Schpok, executive director of the Indiana Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, is slated to join the company April 15 as vice president of operations.
The company in 2013 hashed out a deal with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to employ 183 Hoosiers by the end of 2017 in exchange for up to $2.4 million in conditional tax credits. CEO Cameron Weeks said he expects to meet or exceed that mark next year.
Fathom Voice hasn't been the splashiest tech firm around since its founding in 2007, maintaining a low profile while it amassed more than 1,000 clients across the globe. But after a few high-profile hires, including Schpok, the opening of a San Francisco office this week, and its $4 million round of equity financing expected to close soon, Weeks said the company intends to be more vocal and assertive in the months ahead.
"For the last few years, Fathom has truly been focused on building its product and its platform," Weeks said. Lately, the company has "set out to make some hefty investments in the sales and marketing arena."
Fathom Voice helps companies outfit their customer support and sales teams with phone systems and software via the cloud—or remote servers. Indianapolis-based Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. offers some of the same cloud-based services, but there are few if any small local tech firms in the space.
Its technology features include automatically sending voicemails to emails, for instance, as well as tools that allow support agents to view customer interactions with other departments.
Fathom Voice has 22,000 users and expects to quadruple booked revenue to more than $7 million this year, Weeks said.
Weeks co-founded Fathom while studying at Purdue University in 2007. The company bootstrapped until taking its first outside investment of about $300,000 in 2011. It went on to raise another $2.5 million after that, not including the ongoing financing round.
Fathom Voice named entrepreneur Sean Conlon its vice president of marketing last fall. The Indiana native co-founded and sold a couple of startups while in California in recent years, including pet-item subscription service PetBox. He's back in Indiana now.
Weeks said the company this week began posting jobs for its San Francisco office, although he hopes to add the lion's share of new employees this year in Indianapolis. "We are going to leverage partnerships with local firms … to ensure we are able to find enough qualified people," he said.
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