Let’s talk franchise. Not the “two fries short of a combo” kind, but the $500 billion American growth engine hiding in plain sight. Now imagine that same engine, optimized, AI-fueled, and finally made intelligent enough to stop wasting everyone’s time. That’s where Franzy comes in.
Headquartered in Charlotte and operating with the clarity of a clean term sheet, Franzy just secured a $2.2 million seed round led by York IE, with Front Porch Capital, Overline, Avalanche VC, and Daren Cotter Investments also pulling up to the cap table. It’s not a coincidence. You don’t get a check from York IE if your pitch smells like spray tan and MLM energy. You get it by building a platform that makes the $100 billion franchise resale market actually usable. And Alex Smereczniak and Chris Wright are doing just that.
Alex Smereczniak, serial founder, EY alum, Wake Forest grad, and the guy who turned laundromats into software plays with 2ULaundry and LaundroLab, knows how to turn overlooked problems into operating leverage. Chris Wright brings a decade of franchise operations depth and product chops to match. Together, they built Franzy to do what the backrooms and broker bros never could: make buying and selling franchise units feel like closing a house on Zillow, minus the open house smell and with a lot more cash flow modeling.
In under 7 months, Franzy grew its user base 309% and now serves over 3,000 would-be franchisees. The secret sauce? An AI-powered “Fit Score” that doesn’t care if your cousin ran a Subway, it cares if the numbers and ops actually match your risk profile. Their machine learning models go beyond logos and slogans to deliver custom brand matches, verified resale listings, and expert coaching from discovery through closing.
And they’re just getting warmed up. The seed capital is going to unlock the first real franchise resale marketplace, beta hits Q4 2025. By 2026, they’ll be moving north into Canada and adding financing capabilities for franchise buyers who’d rather not triple-mortgage their lives just to run a Wingstop.
This isn’t another B2B SaaS story with a hockey stick dream and no revenue plan. Franzy is going after the overlooked liquidity layer in franchising, where existing owners want out, and qualified buyers want in, but nobody built the bridge. Until now.
