How I Got $60 Million in Funding
Sam Pillar, Jobber’s CEO and co-founder
talks about Jobber’s incredible fundraising journey
Prior to forming Jobber then-software developers Sam Pillar and Forrest Zeisler took on the task of creating an easy-to-use system that would help small-business owners by automating their day-to-day work. With their interest in all things tech, the pair knew small businesses were struggling to keep on top of their day-to-day operations and could benefit from a software that would offer them flexibility and a way to keep track of quotes, manage employees, schedule jobs, invoice customers and collect payments. Enter Edmonton-based Jobber, an award-winning platform that's now used by more than 100,000 home-service professionals in 47 countries. Jobber allows small-business to run their companies more efficiently, without getting bogged down in paperwork.
“For us, success would be helping small-business owners move more efficiently, survive changes in the economy, support their families and communities and win at creating something on their own”
This article is from Pathways Magazine, the official publication of the Global Capital Summit taking place on March 22-23, 2022.
Jobber has received $60 million USD in funding and raised $16 million USD before this round. That’s an incredible fundraising journey.
We’ve been very capital efficient with our spending, which has allowed us to grow to this point without the need to rely on a lot of outside funding. That said, the outside funding we have raised has been from excellent investors.
We were fortunate to connect early in our journey with Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures. Boris is known for his early investments in category-leading platforms, such as Clio and Wattpad, and he saw the same early opportunity in the underserved home-services market that we did. Another early-stage investor out of Berlin, Germany, with a lot of great software-as-a-service (SaaS) experience named Christoph Janz was also keenly interested in what we were doing, and in 2012 we raised our first small seed round from these great investors and mentors.
In 2015, we raised our Series A, a $6M USD investment from OMERS Ventures, a large Canadian VC that was involved in the Shopify journey, a company we very much look up to. In 2018, OMERS Ventures invested another $9M USD in follow-on financing and has been a great partner for us as we’ve grown quickly in recent years.
We decided midway through 2020 that it was the right time for the business to think about growth capital. We spoke to a number of great investors and received multiple highly competitive term sheets. We were very happy to welcome Summit Partners to lead the investment and are excited about having them on board for the next leg of our journey. In addition to understanding the opportunity we’re going after and sharing our passion for small business, Summit Partners has extensive resources and a strong track record of success.
The business is growing so fast. What’s driving this incredible growth?
We credit much of our success to date to being a purpose-led company committed to helping the people in small business to be successful—in addition to our strong team and best-in-class product. Beyond that, there are three key market drivers that have helped contribute to Jobber’s rapid growth, as well as the resiliency of the homes-service market as a whole.
The first is digital transformation. There has been a tremendous shift in technology adoption among service professionals in recent years, fueled by increasing consumer expectation for a seamless, transparent, technology-enabled service experience. Home service is transforming in the same way that brick-and-mortar retail was transformed by e-commerce.
Second, the industries that Jobber serves, like lawn care, plumbing, HVAC, electrical contracting and more, are growing. Though many small businesses faced tremendous struggle in 2020 in light of the pandemic, businesses in the home-service space showed remarkable resilience. A large portion of our customers are providing non-discretionary or “essential” services. If your furnace breaks, you’re going to fix it. If your roof springs a leak, you’re going to call a roofer, regardless of the pandemic.
Service providers are also benefiting from renewed consumer interest in improving and investing in their indoor and outdoor living spaces, now that everyone is spending most of their time at home. Income that’s normally used for a family vacation or other activities is now being funneled toward home improvement.
Lastly, COVID-19 has increased the need for more contactless customer interactions that ensure social distancing. Jobber’s SaaS and mobile solutions help service professionals to navigate and operate in a touchless world—they can communicate with customers and send quotes and invoices electronically and accept payments online.
How will the round of financing you just received help the company move forward?
This financing will support continued investment in research and development, hiring and customer acquisition. It will help fuel product development focused on providing service professionals with new features to help them grow and run their businesses more efficiently and will help to further accelerate the company’s rapid growth. We plan to hire 200 people in Edmonton, Toronto and remotely across Canada over the next 12 months.
You mentioned COVID-19. How did the business change when the pandemic hit?
When the pandemic hit, we didn’t really know how it would affect our customers or our business. We froze hiring, reduced some of our spending, and just observed how the home-service market performed during this unprecedented time. Although some of our customers regretfully experienced a decline in revenue and new work scheduled in April and May, home service as a category rebounded fairly quickly and actually returned to positive year-over-year growth.
We’re very fortunate that the pandemic hasn’t impacted our business the way it has so many others. In fact, you could argue it’s provided a tailwind. The trend toward digital adoption in home service was gaining momentum before the pandemic hit, but COVID-19 accelerated it.
Also, many of our customers work in industries that have been considered essential, such as plumbing, HVAC, pest control and electrical contracting. These industries have performed very well overall throughout the pandemic. A lot of our customers also run businesses that provide services outdoors, such as lawn and tree care, where social distancing guidelines can be easily followed while continuing to provide services to customers.
And how has COVID changed the way the home-services industry conducts business?
COVID-19 has highlighted some specific examples of why it’s important to have good technology in place. It’s forced a lot of companies to think critically about how they can improve the fundamentals of how they operate their businesses. Technology like Jobber allows you to decouple running a business from the physical space of the business itself. Right now, having access to records and information about commitments to customers at home and on the go is critically important for our customers. Having solid technology in place means that when the unexpected happens, businesses are better able to deal with the situation, and ultimately are more likely to succeed.
You mentioned you now plan to hire 200 people this year. What else is next for Jobber?
The home-service category has been dramatically underserved by technology, from both the service provider and the service consumer. At Jobber, we have a big opportunity to fill this gap, and to transform how home service businesses do work for their customers. This recent growth round will help us make even more meaningful progress toward this goal, by enabling us to invest more aggressively in research and development, hiring, and customer acquisition. We are grateful to have earned the trust of more than 100,000 service professionals who use our platform daily and we look forward to serving many more in the coming years.
– Thanks to Sam Pillar for sharing insights on his fundraising journey with Jobber. Pathways Magazine is the official publication of the Global Capital Summit taking place on March 22-23, 2022.