It’s mid-August at the Ottawa headquarters of compliance software company Assent, where three giant numbers filled with deflated balloons have been left ajar against the cafeteria wall—‘1’, ‘0,’ and ‘0.’ The block numbers are remnants from a celebration in June, where the company officially announced becoming a centaur, after achieving the coveted goal of hitting $100 million USD in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
“It’s a lot of work but if you did 25 percent [growth] for three-and-a-half years, you’re at $200 million, right? It’s just straight math.”
Andrew Waitman
Assent provides a platform that collects vendor management, ethical sourcing, and product data to help complex manufacturers navigate compliance and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Essentially, products like electronics are made of elements like gold, tin, or tungsten, and certain regulations require product manufacturers to know where those materials come from. That’s where Assent comes in: the platform helps manufacturers compile a list of material sources.
With his 10th anniversary leading the company approaching in September and the revenue achievement in the rearview mirror, CEO Andrew Waitman sat down with BetaKit to reflect on the unexpected advantages that brought him to the milestone, and how war kept him away from it longer than he’d hoped.
Armed with mandarin-flavoured sparkling water in one hand and sporadic movement in the other, Waitman laid out how he thinks it’s possible to achieve his next goal for the company to hit $200 million ARR within four years.
Network Effect
Long before leading Assent to centaur status, Waitman grew up a “dirt poor” adopted child in Ottawa, an upbringing he believes influenced him to pursue “practical jobs that were half decently paid.” He wasn’t a fan of cutting up frogs, or the expensively lengthy process of learning litigation, so he saw his “ticket out of poverty” at the University of Waterloo’s engineering program.
He graduated with a BASc in electrical engineering in 1987 before obtaining a Master’s degree in Business at Western University, leading to a stint in the venture capital (VC) scene as a managing partner at Ottawa-based Celtic House Venture Partners in the late 1990s.
Waitman then became a CEO in 2009 when he joined data analytics company Pythian, eventually using his status to join the Ottawa-area charity boxing match Fight for the Cure. The event pits Ottawa-based business leaders against each other in the ring to raise money for the Ottawa Cancer Foundation. Fight for the Cure famously hosted the boxing match between current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau in 2012.
Prepping to take a punch for charity, Waitman began training with the event’s co-founder, Matt Whitteker, every Wednesday. Waitman informed Whitteker that he was imminently departing Pythian during one fateful training session in 2014, leading Whitteker to suggest Waitman “check out” Assent, the consulting organization he co-founded in 2010.
“I said ‘Okay, Matt, I don’t want to make any commitments but you give me a free office and I’ll give you some free advice.’”
Whitteker’s early experience on the consulting side made it apparent that there was a role for software, Waitman explained, as Whitteker would often help companies with their compliance needs in a “one-off” capacity before moving to another company and doing the same tasks.
In response, Assent pivoted to a product-focused business in 2012 and began offering its conflict minerals solution as a result of the United States’ Dodd-Frank Act. As Waitman puts it, there were so many manufacturers going to the top of their supply chains asking for the same information from the same suppliers; a “tedious” process without technology that was “begging for a network effect.”
Over/Underdog
Nearly two years after Waitman officially took the CEO job in September 2014, Assent looked to shed its bootstrapped status and began seeking outside institutional investment. Success eventually came from properly navigating an emerging industry that VCs aren’t familiar with.
“When I went to raise the Series A, not a single person had a clue what I was talking about, and therefore I couldn’t raise in Canada,” Waitman said. “When I went looking in Boston and New York, very few really understood what I was doing.”
For its first-ever external raise, Assent managed to secure $20 million CAD from Boston’s Volition Capital, with support from the OpenText Enterprise Application Fund, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).
“The issue is that becoming a unicorn is about perception of potential.”
Andrew Waitman
Because VCs look for common themes, it’s that “moat of complexity” that Waitman feels was an underrated advantage. If VCs think they understand your business then there will be venture funding flowing to your competitors, Waitman said. To underscore his point, Waitman looked at the current state of the artificial intelligence (AI) market.
“Everybody thinks they know what they’re talking about with AI, they don’t, but at least they think they do, so it’s the only place where money is moving right now,” Waitman explained. “[…] I just didn’t want to be in any space that was obvious, because the Americans are going to start at least 10, maybe 20 [companies] if it’s super exciting.”
The Series A round and the macroeconomic environment for SaaS companies led to growing investor interest and understanding, according to Waitman. Assent went on to secure a $40 million CAD Series B round in 2017 and a $131 million CAD Series C round in 2018.
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The company then reached $50 million ARR in 2021 before securing a $446.5 million CAD Series D round and unicorn status, a $1-billion USD valuation, in January 2022. Unicorn status is nothing to scoff at, but it wasn’t what excited Waitman.
“The issue is that becoming a unicorn is about perception of potential,” Waitman explained. “[…] That doesn’t mean you’ve solved the issue of growing revenue over $100 million, which you could look at as a very, very, very tough milestone.”
The funding was used to expand Assent’s presence in Europe, particularly Germany, and expand its workforce by 40 percent. Assent employees are kept in the loop on the company’s financial goals and progress on an internal financial results dashboard. The entire company knew centaur status was an important milestone, and Waitman’s ‘big bet’ on Europe had Assent pencilling in the $100 million ARR milestone later that year.
Market disarray
According to Waitman, Europe is an important market for a business like Assent. The European Union is often a trendsetter in compliance standards and as a result, the population is “attuned” to regulations, he said.
Additionally, as opposed to Americans balking at fines, Waitman believes Europeans follow regulations because “it’s the right thing to do.” Entering the market through Germany, a complex manufacturing hub with companies such as Mercedes, Porsche, and BMW, seemed like a slam-dunk for a compliance software company.
Then, war broke out. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, along with the rise of interest rates, placed the European market into disarray just as Assent was cementing its place in the region. The import of cheap Russian crude oil into Germany, used by the country’s chemical and automotive manufacturing industry, fell by 99.9 percent over the next year.
The abrupt change led Assent to diversify its European go-to-market efforts beyond Germany by looking to manufacturers in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the Nordic countries sooner than planned. It took a while to recover, but after readjusting its resources Assent got back on track.
Centaur Celebrations
In May 2024, Assent finally became a centaur.
Despite the circumstances, Waitman seemed content with the final timeline.
“2022 was when I was trying to hit [centaur], and in ‘23 I thought we were gonna get super close but there were a lot of headwinds,” Waitman explained. “Then we hit it in ‘24, so eight years after [Series A], which is still pretty darn good.”
Assent’s offices in the US, Kenya, Malaysia, Netherlands, and Canada each had their own tailored festivities, food, and presumably giant balloon-filled ‘100s’ to commemorate the milestone. Additionally, Assent earmarked funds for employee resource groups to donate to charities of their choosing, launched a mentoring program to connect employees with its executive team, and sent surprise gifts to 100 team members.
Assent’s achievement is one of very few among Ottawa tech companies. Shopify may have been a “significant win,” but Waitman hopes that more companies in Canada’s capital can “get to a scale so one wind coming through doesn’t blow everything down,” he said.
While there is no “silver bullet” to becoming a $100 million ARR company, Waitman headlined a panel at Invest Ottawa earlier this summer where he encouraged early-stage founders to not look too far ahead, take their milestones step-by-step, and to adapt when something is not working.
RELATED: Assent CEO talks ESG’s growing impact on stakeholder, customer, and investor relationships
In an email statement to BetaKit, the company said it is currently well-positioned with its financial resources including a strong balance sheet, supportive private equity investors, and outside investor interest, but may consider engaging with new investors if new opportunities arise. At the moment, the company isn’t looking toward an IPO within the next 12 months.
Waitman himself wears the ambition of the next goal on his sleeve—$200 million ARR.
“It’s a lot of work but if you did 25 percent [growth] for three-and-a-half years, you’re at $200 million, right? It’s just straight math.”
Having now led the company for a decade, Waitman also indicated there is still “a lot of the world to play out,” referencing Assent’s lack of presence in Asian countries with large complex manufacturers like Japan, South Korea, and China.
“I think we’ll have 20 percent [growth] this year, […] it’s a lot of work to push into 20 to 25 and it depends on where your actual market dynamics are,” Waitman said. “Our market dynamics are okay, there’s not like crazy tailwinds.”
“The headwinds are tough, but they’re not insurmountable,” Waitman added. “So I think we’re in a reasonably good place.”
Feature image courtesy Assent.