The Indiana University Philanthropic Venture Fund, which invests in IU-related ventures, has invested $250,000 in Indianapolis-based Encamp Inc.
The company works with its clients to make environmental compliance — such as meeting environmental regulations for clean air and water, waste disposal, and hazardous material management — fast, simple and accurate. CEO Luke Jacobs, lead technical architect Daniel Smedema and customer success manager Sam Jacobs founded the company. Luke Jacobs and Smedema are IU Bloomington graduates.
Luke Jacobs said environmental regulations have been in place since the 1970s to protect human health, restore the natural environment and sustain natural resources. These regulations have also increased business operating expenses for companies to maintain compliance.
“Our team has engineered a software platform that makes it faster and simpler for businesses to maintain compliance with environmental regulations while minimizing mistakes caused by human error,” Jacobs said. “Our mission is to create software for our customers that makes it easier than ever to achieve high levels of corporate environmental responsibility while also reducing the time and money it takes to get there.”
Encamp’s web application leads clients through collecting the data that needs to be included on various environmental compliance reports, beginning with Tier 2 Hazardous Material Inventory.
“Once a customer has added the data for their facility, our software allows them to certify that their reports are ready to be submitted,” Jacobs said. “Encamp then automates submitting the reports to the correct regulatory agencies, on time and in the right way. This transforms a process that could take our customers weeks into one that can be completed in a few hours or less.”
Jacobs said the $250,000 investment from the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund will be used to scale Encamp’s sales, customer success and engineering teams.
“We currently serve approximately 130 client companies in the agriculture, energy, logistics and manufacturing industries, with about 1,000 facilities under their management. These aren’t the only industries that have environmental reporting obligations, but we have had great initial traction with them,” Jacobs said. “As we grow in 2019 and beyond, we have plans to expand into other sectors.”
Teri Willey, manager of the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund and executive director of the IU Research and Technology Corp., said she and her colleagues are pleased to work with Encamp and its founders.
“These Indiana University graduates — Luke in environmental science and Daniel in computer science — have put together an impressive plan that builds on their industry experience,” Willey said. “Encamp was selected to the seven-week gBeta accelerator program for early-stage companies, and it has already attracted notable customers and investors.”
The investment closed out Encamp’s $1.1 million seed-funding round. The company received other investments from notable local investors, including a limited partner of High Alpha and Formstack founder Ade Olonoh.
Jacobs said IU’s reputation as an innovative and forward-thinking institution is in line with the kind of company Encamp strives to become.
“One of the most difficult and important challenges that startups face early on is establishing social proof and answering the question ‘Why should people trust us?’ We see this investment from the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund as a signal that we are bringing value to our customers. We are dreaming big, and we are ready to grow Encamp into a great tech business in Indiana,” Jacobs said.
“We are also excited to work at establishing a recruiting pipeline from the great business and environmental science programs at IU. Finding great people is the key to building an awesome company, and as schools like IU continue to invest in the startup scene in Indiana, we see the potential to bring in a lot of talent and create even more value for our customers and for the state as a whole.”
