PRINCETON, N.J.– Edison Partners, a leading growth equity investment firm, today announced a $15 million investment in K1x, the leading provider of automated solutions for aggregation and packet production for the Schedule K-1 federal tax form and end-to-end tax return solutions for tax-exempt organizations. The investment closely follows K1x’s acquisition of tax-technology products from Crowe LLP. As part of the transaction, Jennifer Lee, partner at Edison Partners, will join K1x’s board of directors.
K1x will use the funds to scale its commercial operations, customer success and product roadmap. The new funding will allow the Chicago-based company to further its “people first” culture, recruit and retain the best associates in the industry, and pursue its near-term and long-term goals. This investment also will enable K1x to accelerate its industry-leading machine-learning technology into more industry segments, and grow in sectors that provide more solutions to its clients. The investment also will enable K1x to support its channel partners with a complementary product portfolio, increased marketing and sales support and tailored customer success to increase their value proposition.
The K1x Advantage Suite is a modular software solution that allows K-1 producers and receivers to come together on a digital platform. Its streamlined approach helps reduce or eliminate traditional Excel and paper-based processes, transforming the industry. The K1x Advantage Suite is the first-ever all-digital K-1 packet production platform, resulting in faster delivery times, more accurate information, and streamlined reporting. It improves investor relations through embedded investment management and communication features and reduces countless hours of compiling and aggregating data to seconds.
“We’re excited to partner with Edison Partners because of its track record of quality partnering and success creation, experienced operating partners and resource networks which we will leverage during our evolution, and its focus on fintech and SaaS technology firms similar to K1x,” said John LaMancuso, CEO, K1x. “K1x will use this investment to expand our solutions and support models. This expansion will enable all users of our automated K-1 ecosystem and tax-exempt solutions to leverage data and technology to increase operational efficiency and accuracy of reporting.”
Today, most companies aggregate and prepare Schedule K-1 packets using Excel spreadsheet files containing thousands of rows and columns. It’s a labyrinthine, complex, time-consuming manual process, and C-suite executives ultimately need to confirm and stand behind the accuracy. Using the manual spreadsheet method, companies are challenged every year to prepare the Schedule K-1 packets, review them and ensure deadlines are met to file within the regulatory timeframe. K1x lightens the labor and improves accuracy, timeliness, effectiveness, and efficiency as part of a company’s automated tax-preparation solution.
“When we dove into K1x and the problem the company solves, we were astonished at the lack of automation, digitization, and innovation in K-1 related compliance and tax industries. We saw that K1x is light-years ahead of its competition in creating a solution that solves this problem,” said Jennifer Lee, partner at Edison Partners who led the investment. “We believe we are backing a best-in-class product penetrating a whitespace market run by a talented CEO, John LaMancuso, who has built businesses and brands from scratch multiple times. We look forward to working with John and the talented K1x team to support its growth.”
