Second Avenue Partners Co-Founder Nick Hanauer joins the Knack Board of Directors; $3.5 million will support Knack’s rapid growth

Knack, the leader in custom gifting, announced that it has raised $3.5M in Series A equity investment to support the company’s rapid growth in the personal and corporate gifting space. The latest fundraising round was led by Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners. As part of the equity investment agreement, Second Avenue’s partner and co-founder, Nick Hanauer will join the Knack board of directors.

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“We looked at the numbers, the innovations, and the growth opportunities at Knack and, frankly, we were blown away. We think the more people hear about Knack, the more they will want the Knack difference in gifting. I’m looking forward to working with Laura and the board.”

“While we’ve enjoyed triple-digit growth every year since our inception, the pandemic accelerated our growth curve by at least a year as people sought digital methods for staying connected. This investment will allow us to make infrastructure investments to support and multiply that growth,” said Laura Jennings, Knack Founder and CEO. “Second Avenue Partners is the perfect team to help our company continue our growth trajectory, and Nick is someone I know and trust to provide excellent guidance and counsel. He will be a strong addition to our board.”

Founded by software exec and ex-VC, Laura Jennings in 2015, Knack is a modern gift-giving e-commerce platform for personal, professional, and corporate gifting. Knack empowers both individuals and companies to create gifts that reflect their values and relationship with the recipient. For corporate customers, Knack also helps create gifts and programs that are memorable and help with client appreciation and employee engagement.

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Knack invites customers to incorporate values-based items into gift sets, and enhances gifts with tech-enabled experiences such as video messages, the ability to send gifts via email, a custom gift web page accessible via a QR code, and more. Just this week, they launched their latest innovation, Knest by Knack, which invites individuals and companies to design an immersive page with videos, photos, custom messages, PDFs, and weblinks surrounding their own curated gift selection, and is sent via email to recipients. Bootstrapped by Jennings to over $20M in annual revenue, this Series A financing round represents the first external equity investment in the company.

“Second Avenue Partners provides working capital for early-stage companies in the greater Puget Sound area and Knack is a pioneering company with a limitless future,” said Nick Hanauer, partner and founder of Second Avenue. “We looked at the numbers, the innovations, and the growth opportunities at Knack and, frankly, we were blown away. We think the more people hear about Knack, the more they will want the Knack difference in gifting. I’m looking forward to working with Laura and the board.”

Knack’s business momentum has been building steadily since its 2015 launch. The Second Avenue equity investment closely follows a $6.5M senior debt package from Stonegate Capital which closed in July.

Knack has consistently innovated the gifting category, deploying the latest technologies to enhance gifting and increase satisfaction for givers and recipients.

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