Edmonton-based startup Jobber, which provides an online platform for home service businesses, has raised US$60 million, led by Summit Partners and existing investors OMERS Ventures and Version One Ventures. It's the largest technology growth-equity financing in the city's history, reports The Globe and Mail using data from Refinitiv.
"What some people don’t know about Edmonton is that there’s a lot of great talent here, including in engineering because of institutions like the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), the computer engineering, and computing science program at the University of Alberta, and other technical programs at schools like MacEwan and NAIT," CEO and co-founder Sam Pillar said in a statement to Taproot.
"We’ve built a ton of momentum and a great employer brand in Edmonton and we plan on continuing to grow here," he said, adding that the company plans to hire 200 new people in 2021 with many of those positions in Edmonton.
Sam Pillar and Forrest Zeisler started the company nearly a decade ago after meeting in a local coffee shop. The Globe and Mail article states recurring revenue increased by 90% in 2020 over 2019 despite the pandemic, while its customer count topped 100,000, mostly in the United States and Canada.
“What excites me most about the funding Jobber has secured is that it is going to fuel their growth and accelerate their expansion globally," Edmonton Global CEO Malcolm Bruce told Taproot, adding that the pandemic has spurred businesses, especially small businesses, to go digital.
"Jobber represents a gigantic leap forward for the thousands of small businesses that have moved to their platform. It’s amazing that they are not only contributing to building a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship here in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, they are contributing to the economic wellbeing of businesses and communities around the world," Bruce said.
"It’s inspiring to watch their success.”