Edmonton software company raises $100M US — largest venture capital investment in city's history
CBC
Jobber, an Edmonton company that sells operations management software to small home-service businesses, has raised a record amount of venture capital funding.
The company announced on Tuesday that it had raised $100 million US ($134 million Cdn) in Series D funding. This is the fourth stage of fundraising that a business completes after the seed stage. The investment was led by growth equity investor General Atlantic and included funds from previous investors Summit Partners, Version One Ventures and Tech Pioneers Fund.
According to the Canadian Venture Capital Private Equity Association's research and product team, Jobber's latest venture capital investment is the largest in Edmonton's history.
"It's an exciting time," CEO and co-founder Sam Pillar told CBC News on Wednesday.
Pillar and Forrest Zeisler — both University of Alberta graduates and former freelance software developers — started talking about the company that would become Jobber in 2010. The pair met at the 109th Street Remedy Cafe, which both men were using as an office at the time.
Pillar, who had been doing some work for small home-service companies, had realized there wasn't much software tailored to them. Busy painters, plumbers, landscapers and roofers were running businesses out of their trucks, scribbling down figures in coil-bound notebooks stuffed with post-it notes, he said.
Jobber built a subscription-based software service with their needs in mind. Small companies in more than 50 fields now use it to dispatch employees, generate quotes, optimize routes, track jobs and take payments.
Since forming Octopusapp Inc., which is still the company's official name, Pillar and Zeisler have grown the business from two employees to nearly 600.
In addition to its Edmonton headquarters, Jobber has offices in Toronto and Salt Lake City, Utah. It's also been hiring remote workers in Canada, the U.S., and Latin America.
As other tech companies have been shrinking, Jobber has kept growing, avoiding layoffs, even during the first phase of the pandemic.
The company generated more than $134 million in revenue last year.
"It's bucking the trend in Canada and globally, so it's a vote of confidence for Jobber specifically, but also the tech system as a whole," said Jeff Bell, the director of research and business intelligence for the business development agency Edmonton Global.
Bell said Jobber has leveraged local tech talent in the Edmonton region and has focused on services that don't disappear during downturns.
"When plumbing breaks, you need to hire a plumber," he said. "When your lights go, you need to hire an electrician."
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