Why We Invested in SteelBrick

Recently we had a kick off strategy session with SteelBrick, a new Series A investment for Emergence. I walked away feeling totally energized about working with this amazing team to build a next generation SaaS leader to enable “Selling made Simple”. I want to take a moment to share why I’m so excited to be working with Founder Max Rudman, CEO Godard Abel and the entire SteelBrick team and why this was such a great fit for Emergence.

The press release on our financing: http://www.steelbrick.com/press-release-steelbrick-financing-from-emergence-capital

First, this product solves a real pain point in the market in an elegant and repeatable fashion. Configure, Price and Quoting (“CPQ”) solutions have become “standard practice” for leading sales organizations similar to how CRM and Marketing Automation became “must have” solutions. Founder Max Rudman bootstrapped the business to over 150 happy customers leveraging the Salesforce.com platform with no outside capital. The power of a scrappy, product-oriented founder who is intensely focused on customer success came through loud and clear in the many conversations we had with their delighted customers.

Second, Godard Abel and Matt Gorniak, the Founding team at BigMachines, who pioneered the CPQ space, successfully sold BigMachines to Oracle but never achieved their ultimate goal of building a public, independent company. When they discovered SteelBrick, a true SaaS CPQ solution built on the Salesforce platform, they decided to join Max and bring the band back together again to achieve their ultimate dream.

Third, they are thinking big from the start. They understand what it takes to build a market leader and Godard and his team are being incredibly thoughtful about the people he wants to recruit and the culture he wants to build. It is part of their mission to create a great place to work for hundreds and hopefully thousands of people. As an investor it simply doesn’t get any better than this, a proven product in an important emerging category, a proven team with relevent domain expertise and an opportunity to partner with them in the earliest days to build a world class team to maximize the potential of the business.

It’s an honor to work with Godard and his team — and we are incredibly excited to change the world of selling made simple together.