Guidesly, which has 16 full-time employees at its Buffalo HQ and 65 overall, expects to approximately double its headcount this year
Fresh off closing Guidesly’s second enterprise contrast in the scuba industry, cofounder and CEO David Lord sat in the company’s Buffalo, NY, headquarters and described the opportunity ahead.
“Foot on the gas growth,” Lord said. “Guidesly is going to change everything.”
Lord, whose company moved to Buffalo after winning a $1M investment from 43North in 2023, was talking specifically about the scuba industry, where there is no modern end-to-end business platform. Even scuba companies making north of $10M are still largely managing their business on out-of-date DOS systems and Guidesly is now an official partner with PADI, the world’s largest scuba training and certificate agency.
He was also talking about the fishing industry, where Guidesly started, and where there is strong competition for digital marketing tools but few AI-enabled, enterprise-grade software platforms like Guidesly. The company is now positioned to after the whales in the fishing industry, complementing its growth among independent guides and small companies.
As Guidesly cements its leadership position in those industries, its eye will swing to hunting, snow sports, mountain sports and others where it currently has a toehold.
Lord said Guidesly grew revenue 300% in 2025, which he described as a “year of building.” That included the company’s transition into a software suite that entails the Jack AI personalized marketing machine and CRM along with back-end operations tools.
He expects to grow 500% this year, which will bring Guidesly to significant revenue and the cusp of profitability. Guidesly raised a $10M Series A round of funding in early 2025. It expects to raise several million this year as a bridge to a larger round in 2027.
Guidesly has 16 employees at its Buffalo, a handful of workers at other U.S. locations, a full-time staff of 45 in India and a 50-person product team in the Philippines. Each of those teams will roughly double over the next few years, including the Buffalo team where Guidesly will hire into business roles across sales and operations.
Lord noted that Guidesly’s location in Buffalo has been a significant factor in its success, as it retained the majority of its high-quality employees while the company transitioned from a marketing tool to a vertical business platform.
“Most growth companies in other cities are constantly replacing the people they’ve trained,” Lord said. “There’s something to be said about the Buffalo culture, the commitment to the community and the joy in being part of that community.”
Lord compared it to the early days of Boston, where he led one of the early dot-com software startups. Those early days the community was small, but it grew into a serious strategy that included hundreds of venture firms and thousands of tech companies.
“These stories, as the turnaround comes about, make for epic cities,” Lord said. “There are a lot of different pieces of it but Buffalo already has the community part. Now it’s just about connection and growth.”
Guidesly was among 11 companies recently “drafted” onto the Series B[uffalo] team by Buffalo Bills legend Eric Wood, honoring its momentum and growth projections. This is the second in a series of profiles on those companies.
The others include:
