Boast.ai has made some recent additions to its leadership team as part of a push to bring on experienced members that can help the software company scale and grow its offering.
Tara Janke has joined as Boast.ai’s chief technology officer while Chris Cottle and Tim Fisher have taken on the roles of chief marketing officer and chief financial officer, respectively.
“We’re looking to see how we can accelerate our growth and really get to the $100 million ARR.”
Boast.ai has also added a new board member, bringing on Laurie Schultz, who was most recently the CEO of fellow British Columbia-based company Galvanize. Galvanize was acquired by a United States firm earlier this year for $1 billion USD.
Boast.ai, which was bootstrapped for the first ten years of its existence, is bringing on the new team members as it looks to use its recently raised capital to scale.
The company’s software platform automates the process for claiming R&D tax credits in the United States (US) and Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credits in Canada. It serves close to 1,000 customers across Canada and the US.
Late last year, the Vancouver-based company raised its first round of institutional financing, pulling in $30 million CAD. Having bootstrapped its way to eight figures in revenue, the goal of the raise was to scale Boast.ai’s reach and tackle a sizable market opportunity (Canadian and US governments provide nearly $20 billion CAD in tax credit annually). Boast.ai has its sights set on reaching $100 million in revenue within the next couple of years.
“The driver behind bringing on a lot of these executives with a lot of experience, that have ‘been there done that,’ is to help [Boast.ai] avoid some common mistakes and really accelerate that timeline,” said Alex Popa, co-founder and CEO of Boast.ai.
“We’re looking to see how we can accelerate our growth and really get to the $100 million ARR within the next couple of years,” added fellow co-founder and Boast.ai president Lloyed Lobo. “That’s really our goal.”
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In addition to its new executives, Boast.ai is on a significant hiring spree. In the first quarter of 2021, the company nearly doubled the size of its team to 80 employees and has previously expressed plans to rapidly grow its employee base across Canada.
The hires are needed to support Boast.ai’s growing customer base as well as its product line. In addition to selling its R&D credit software, Boast.ai also recently moved into loans. Earlier this year, the company raised a $125 million CAD credit facility from Brevet Capital in order to provide companies with up-front loans for their government research and development (R&D) tax credits. This represented a major expansion for Boast.ai, whose core platform allows companies to claim R&D tax credits in the United States (US) and Canada.
“All of these people, there are two things [they bring],” said Lobo. “One is, we’re selling to larger and larger companies, and from a product and go to market standpoint, we need to have the right people who’ve sold in the space to larger companies.” He added that Boast.ai’s new executives also bring with them experience and knowledge of growing companies to $100 million in revenue – one of Boast.ai’s major goals.
Janke brings with her to the CTO role more than 20 years of experience as a product management and engineering executive. Prior to Boast.ai, Janke was the vice president of product development at Promethean, a US-based edtech company. She also spent seven years at sales tax software company Avalara where she helped develop its global engineering team and increase the company’s product lines, which reportedly resulted in doubling revenues year-over-year.
Fisher, who joins as Boast.ai’s CFO, previously worked as director of financial planning and analytics at Lumere, which was acquired by GHX, Inc. in January of last year. He also brings to Boast.ai experience as the CFO for edtech company Elevate K-12.
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Cottle is a longtime marketing executive and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in B2B and B2C sectors. Cottle has been part of a number of acquisitions throughout his career, including companies he founded and, most recently, MaritzCX where he served as chief marketing officer.
Schultz is also a notable board addition for Boast.ai as, in addition to her recent experience with Galvanize, Schultz also offers to Boast.ai experience from working at Sage, Intuit, KPMG and Telus.
“Alex and Lloyed have created an extraordinary opportunity to revolutionize an industry to become the de facto standard for tax credit submission,” said Janke. “Boast’s technology makes the process simple and efficient, allowing its customers to focus on supercharging their growth. I’m thrilled to help them take the existing technology further as well as build the next generation of Boast products.”
“As someone who’s managed R&D Tax Credit filings for several companies, I felt the customer pain point acutely,” added Fisher. “I knew that Boast.ai was ready for exponential growth and I couldn’t stay away.”
Image courtesy Boast.ai
