June 23, 2023: Build together

Let us explain…

Caisse de Depot is investing $125m in Montreal-based GSoft which had previously bootstrapped.

How did the company get here?

The company reached $100m USD in revenue last year and is growing at 30% per year. They got there with a product called ShareGate, with IT professionals use to more easily navigate Microsoft365. They have also built HR tech that their clients to manage their employees.

Why did it raise? 

The company wants to get more acquisitive and needs capital to pull off the acquisitions it is interested in.

What is interesting about this?

Most people will tell you to build your company as an add-on or interphase to a large platform is a dangerous and unprofitable way to build a business. While that may be true for consumer businesses or growth tech startups (like Twitter) but for large enterprise companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce if you understand their strategy there is ample space to build on their platform.

In many cases, these companies will help you go to market as it will help your business and they may eventually acquire you.

The other thing I like about this deal is that GSoft clearly understands what they want to do with the capital. They want to acquire companies and have now priced their equity. This gives them the ability to acquire companies in a way that is accretive by either paying cash for them or doing so with shares that they now know the value of.

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These 3 tech companies are hiring remote workers in Canada right now

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