Kinnek, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based marketplace for small businesses to find suppliers and manage purchasing, has just raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Thrive Capital.
It already looks like a smart bet.
The company currently has 20,000 businesses and 2,000 suppliers using its marketplace, and they’re striking millions of dollars worth of deals every week, says cofounder Karthik Sridharan. Considering the company’s age and the fragmented landscape in which it’s operating – think restaurants to distilleries to manufacturers – that kind of traction is meaningful.
It’s also just the tip of the iceberg, apparently. According to a spokesperson for the company, Kinnek “conservatively” estimates that U.S. businesses with up to 100 employees and $20 million in yearly sales spend more than $2.2 trillion annually on machinery, equipment and physical goods based on data from Visa, Intuit, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While we can’t vouch for the accuracy of that number (there are lots of different figures floating around out there), what is clear is the competition, or lack of it, facing Kinnek.