Fundica Roadshow Success Story: Pierre-Olivier Charlebois, CEO of reDock (Views: 1817)
Wed, 28 Mar 2018
There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur in Canada. Thankfully, Canadian entrepreneurs have a strong support system of investors, partners, media, mentors and government to enable their growth and success. Even if startups are sitting on the most amazing product of all time, a successful startup often requires a nudge in the right direction.
What better place to get the support than the Fundica Roadshow? The Fundica Roadshow offers a unique platform where startups stand to gain early exposure and attention from investors and the rest of the tech community.
We follow our past participants very closely and are pleased to showcase their success.
We interviewed Pierre-Olivier Charlebois, CEO of reDock, an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled enterprise SaaS solution that helps companies build winning proposals and RFP responses, growing profit by increasing proposal throughput, win rates, and margins.
Pierre-Olivier pitched at the Fundica Roadshow in 2017 and has since been able to raise over $1M in funding. They currently have nine employees and have secured a major national contract with BDO Canada LLP.
Here’s how our conversation went:
Tell us more about the early days of your venture, how did you come up the idea for your company?
The idea of reDock and the service we bring to the industry stemmed from my own experiences and frustrations.
Prior to reDock I founded Koneka, a consultant company focused on customer web applications, with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. We had created an AI-based program to help a legal publishing company compose long and complex documents. There I recognized a need to quickly and consistently automate documents using existing, but always hard to find, corporate information.
I went to bring document automation to government officials and found myself in proposal-development drudgery, it was tedious how manual data searching and tagging can be. There had to be a better way. I teamed up with data scientists, programmers and proposal-developing experts. Together we created an AI-based software that learns and responds to your precise needs the more you use it. The result is that you can develop proposals faster than ever.
What was the biggest challenge you faced while attempting to raise funds?
The biggest challenge, that I find, when attempting to raise funds, is that I’m still wearing the hat as a CEO, and still need to ensure the business is running smoothly. Fundraising is vital to our success (and many other startups), and when I’m in fundraising mode it takes up a lot of time. There are only so many hours in a day. But I have a responsibility to still make sure the day-to-day business operations are running. This is where building a solid team is also equally as important. We’ve built an incredible team here at reDock which gives me the time to be able to focus on raising funds.
How did the Fundica Roadshow help you grow your business?
After winning the Fundica Roadshow in Montreal last year, we were able to raise $750K within a few months and where accepted as part of the 500 Startups program in San Francisco. This was definitely facilitated thanks to the exposure that Fundica provided. This gave us a fantastic runway and started our funding round on a very high note. We were able to invest in our marketing and sales efforts, and as a result are in discussions with several companies out of the US, UK, and Australia. In addition, BDO is launching reDock across Canada, and finally, we’re in a pilot phase with one of the Big Four accounting firms (under NDA).
Join reDock and hundreds of other successful startups by pitching at the 2018 Fundica Roadshow. Click here to apply.
Haven’t launched your startup yet, but still want to check out the scene? Don’t fret - you can still attend the Fundica Roadshow by buying tickets for our Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver stops.
Montreal, May 1st, 2018: Tickets here
Vancouver, May 31st, 2018: Tickets here
Toronto, June 28th, 2018: Tickets here
Finale, Montreal, July 12th, 2018: Tickets here
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