An eight-figure investment will help a New York City waste management software company take the next steps toward its founder’s ultimate goal — to become the industry’s system of record.
CurbWaste closed Oct. 22 on a $28 million Series B funding round led by Socium Ventures, the venture capital arm of Cox Enterprises. The cash influx brings the company’s total funding to $50 million.
“We weren’t actively fundraising. I was introduced to Cox Enterprises, and we hit it off. I respected how Cox thought of our business,” said Mike Marmo, a one-time hauler who launched CurbWaste in 2021 after experimenting with software to bolster his former waste management company. “We want to be very methodical in how we build our products. They were in line with the vision.”
That vision involves accelerating the product growth map for CurbWaste, which brings order management, invoicing, real-time dispatch and other hauler functions under a single interface. By improving the application’s AI capabilities and building out its business intelligence tools, Marmo hopes to make the software an indispensable part of the hauling industry.
“I want to make the customer experience as good as it can be,” he said.
CurbWaste has some 150 customers in 40 states, mainly smaller and independent companies. Marmo has built that customer base through continually enhancing the product, changing his 60 employees with creating new features that are easy to use and provide value for users.
“As one of CurbWaste’s earliest customers, it’s been incredible to see how far the platform has come,” said Sean Bartam, CEO of ADM Waste, a Georgia-based dumpster and portable toilet rental company. “From day one, they’ve been a true partner, constantly evolving the product to meet our needs and saving us hours of manual work.”
Marmo’s push toward analytics may save CurbWaste customers even more hours. He’s working to enable the software to gather more information and present it in ways that are actionable for people across customer operations.
“We need to give customers flexibility to manipulate data. The visualization of the data is really important. Not every person needs to see every single thing,” he said. “We’re allowing customers to get visibility and understand areas in which they can improve and make proactive decisions.”
This customer-centric approach is what Marmo hopes will propel CurbWaste to become an industry mainstay. By building out the product and the customer base, he wants to make collection easier and help companies grow within and outside the platform.
That will help him toward his long-term vision. Where customer relationship management has Salesforce and the roofing industry has Roofr, he feels CurbWaste could fill a similar role within waste hauling. He’s in talks to expand service to larger companies and municipalities, touting the advantages of leaning on CurbWaste as opposed to going the proprietary route.
“If we build a great product and we’re making our waste haulers successful … inevitably, we’re going to get on companies’ radars,” he said. “Then it becomes the value proposition of what we can offer versus what they can build.”
