One of Canada's hottest startups is entering a rapid growth phase as it institutes the serious marketing phase of its business plan. That's according to
gShift Labs founder and CEO Krista LaRiviere, whose company was named startup of the year in 2010 by the
Canadian Innovation Exchange.
GShift's initial funding of $500,000 last year from the MaRS incubator in downtown Toronto was more than tripled this month by new injections of capital:
a $1.1 million investment from GrowthWorks and $500,000 from the federal government's ministry of economic development. "We've now been able to invest into hiring engineers as well as really building out our sales and marketing team," LaRiviere says. "When we closed the round with GrowthWorks, we were six people. We're now 12."
For gShift, which has currently attracted roughly 200 paying clients since launching in beta in May 2010, marketing is a particular challenge, because its product is creating a new market category in search engine optimization strategy-management software.
"We founded the company because we knew the SEO space was ripe for automation--there wasn't really a product that allowed people to track all the different data points and apply business intelligence into a reporting engine.... We really need to shift how people think."
Right now, when businesses think of SEO, they think automatically of hiring a consultant. "They don't think, 'Let me buy some software.'" But LaRiviere says that as the complexity of digital marketing expands, it's only a matter of time before the utility of an easy-to-use system that automates and provides cause-and-effects results measurement will become obvious to all.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Krista LaRiviere, CEO, gShift Labs