Founded just six years ago, the company’s early investors include Launch NY, S2, Dion Dawkins, Jack Greco, Samantha Bonano and others.
Now Azuna has 60 local employees, an entire floor at Seneca One Tower and some exciting decisions to make.
Six years ago, Scott Dancy founded Azuna to explore an odor elimination product based on tea tree oil.
It turns out he can smell a good business opportunity.
Azuna is on pace to break $100 million in revenue this year, the fruition of a breathless growth story that is poised to make a group of Buffalo-based investors very happy.
The company develops, manufactures and sells plant-based household odor eliminators. It has expanded to 60 fulltime employees in Buffalo, including about 40 at its HQ on the 28th floor of Seneca One.
Dancy used to talk about finding ways to partner with household names in the cleaning space. Now he believes his company is becoming one of those giants.
“We just focused on building a great brand around a really good product,” Dancy said. “That’s why we have a very large subscription base and returning customer rates that are well above the industry standard.”
Azuna belongs to a new crop of exciting high-growth startup companies that are breaking into national and global marketplaces.
Centivo has raised more than $200 million in outside capital and moved its 100-plus-person team in Buffalo to a new downtown HQ last year.
Viridi is at the forefront of a global push toward electrification while breathing life into a formerly vacant manufacturing campus on Buffalo’s East Side.
Food Nerd, Top Seedz and Jeca Energy have all engineered national breakouts for their healthy food startups, with significant local manufacturing plans.
Like ACV Auctions, Buffalo’s first software unicorn that IPO’d at a $3.8 billion valuation, Azuna is deeply connected to its Buffalo roots. Dancy lives in downtown Buffalo and each of his fulltime employees has equity in the company. Many of the company’s leaders have been with Azuna for most of the ride – all the way back to celebratory team dinners for hitting $100,000 in monthly revenue.
Azuna recently lured Andrew O’Rourke, who already saw one great exit as the former finance chief of Bariatric Fusion, to the company as chief revenue officer.
The company was also supported early-on by local investors. That list includes Launch NY, the S2 investor syndicate led by Ron Faso and John Baldo, Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Dion Dawkins, ACV cofounder Jack Greco, Samantha Bonano and others. But Dancy notes that the firm has grown without major injections of institutional capital, which means he’s retained a high percentage of equity.
Azuna has forged many marketing-based partnerships – it is the official odor eliminator of the Buffalo Bills and Sabres and the American Kennel Club. But this year it will enter a new front in the goal to continue growing: retail. The company is finalizing agreements with several national health food and grocery chains on shelves across the country in 2026.
Where is all of this going? Dancy has already received lucrative offers for the business from private equity firms, but he’s hesitant to publicly make any predictions. The company is putting the pieces into place to secure a high value for its brand and its shareholders.
But whatever the next few years bring, Dancy believes the company’s presence in Buffalo has a bright future. Azuna’s produce, sales and marketing prowess is a pure expression of locally-based talent.
“We want to be seen on every shelf and at every store and to be all over the internet,” he said. “And when people see that, we want them to say, ‘Oh, there’s another company from Buffalo that blew up.”
