Inside SOCi: How this $100M+ San Diego Startup Grew from Zero to 1,000 Clients
SOCi CEO Afif Khoury shares how it landed its first customer and what's next.
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Afif Khoury is one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs in San Diego.
In August, his AI marketing-technology company hit $100 million in annualized recurring revenue for the first time. Backed by top investors like JMI Equity, Ankona Capital, Seismic CEO Doug Winter, and others — SOCi Inc. is one of the very few San Diego-based tech companies to reach such a milestone.
Today, Khoury sits on the board of Lawmatics, a venture-backed software company ($14M+ raised) founded by Matt Spiegel. He is also an advisor for Manscaped, a consumer company that was once valued at around $1 billion, at its peak in 2021. He also mentors the next-generation of founders at EvoNexus, one of San Diego’s longest-standing accelerator programs for emerging startups.
These days, Khoury’s calendar is filled by leading his 700-plus person global software company, which makes money by helping more than 1,000 companies improve their search optimization, social strategy, reputation management, and much more.
On a Zoom call in August, Khoury shared with me his overarching goal which is to build “one of the most important software companies in the world.” In fact, He believes SOCi’s $100 million revenue milestone is only the beginning, and has lofty plans for the next decade, in which he shares more insight on below.
High-Level Overview
Founded in 2012, SOCi is an AI-powered marketing-tech platform for enterprises.
To date, it has raised over $230 million in funding and is backed by growth equity firm JMI Equity, Ankona Capital, to name a few.
The startup helps multi-location companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Ace Hardware, among others, better manage their social media, search, reviews, and other digital marketing channels through its CoMarketing Cloud.
Based in Downtown San Diego, it’s one of the fastest growing technology companies and has more than 700 employees in different tech hubs.
Founding Story
Khoury began his career as a scientist who had originally planned to go to medical school, but instead opted to create his own startup; a self-diagnosis platform called SymptomCare.com, which set out to democratize healthcare.
After exiting the business, Khoury transitioned as a high-tech Silicon Valley M&A attorney and then became a venture capitalist by launching his own VC firm, investing in everything from pharmaceutical startups to digital marketing firms.
Khoury took over as CEO for one of the companies in the fund, a social media company called FanGate Media, which helped clients run sweepstakes and contests through its platform. A question from one of the company’s clients sparked the idea for SOCi — helping companies manage content across its multiple locations.
Khoury began talking to co-founder and chief technology officer Alo Sarv about the idea. In 2012, they incorporated the company and landed their first client two years in.
“Our first customer came during the EvoNexus program. I asked all the other startup founders around us to take their company signs down when the client came to visit. The goal was to make us seem larger than we were — we had a total of three people at the time,” said Khoury.
Winning Over Customers, One at a Time
Today, every large corporation has their marketing division who uses a platform to manage their content and social media accounts on a global scale.
SOCi’s CoMarketing Cloud enables brands to manage the online presence of multiple locations, infusing in local content while also keeping core elements consistent.
Its customers include: Ace Hardware, Anytime Fitness, Sport Clips, Ford, Jersey Mike’s and Nekter Juice Bar, and others — which have hundreds or thousands of locations to manage, according to the company.
In particular, it helps brands maintain a local voice while also having the authority and reliability of a national brand. While today, it seems common for companies to pay for this type of solution, it was an uphill battle early on, said Khoury.
“It was really hard to convince someone to switch from 7 different platforms and come over to our one system,” said Khoury. “We started by wanting to solve one thing really well. We had to prove our value in one area, then prove it in the next one, until eventually being known as the go-to platform.”
Looking Ahead
Headquartered in Downtown San Diego, SOCi leases office space next to unicorn startup ClickUp near Petco Park. Today it has nearly 700 employees across the U.S.
I wrote about SOCi for the San Diego Business Journal back in 2021. At that time, it had made its first acquisition of Brandify, which allowed them to remain competitive against other software firms such as Sprinklr and Marketo (acquired for $4 billion by Adobe in 2018).
Today, it remains one of the fastest-growing companies for the seventh straight year. The $100 million annual revenue milestone is a significant feat — it joins San Diego’s top technology companies alongside ServiceNow, Seismic, Tealium, who also reached this accomplishment as a late-stage software startup.
“It’s been a hell of a journey so far,” said Khoury. “In the early days, I always knew we had the right signs of life, but we had to figure out why we were cutting off its own oxygen. When we finally let it breathe, it was up and off to the races. Today, SOCi is on track to book in a single year, what took us the first seven years to book in terms of revenue — we’re just getting started.”