Can a tech company continue to scale and hire in the face of a pandemic? Can the tech community still access venture capital? Do unicorns exist?
If you’re ApplyBoard, the Kitchener-based scaleup that refuses to stop growing, the answer is a resounding yes to all of the above.
Pandemic or no, Applyboard announced Monday night it has closed a CDN$100-million Series C fundraising round, giving it a CDN$2-billion valuation and entry into the rare club of Canadian unicorns (a private company with valuation north of $1 billion). Word came just hours shy of the company’s fifth anniversary on May 5.
The last purely Canadian company from Waterloo Region to reach unicorn status was Kik, in 2015. Faire, a U.S.- and Kitchener-based company, reached the unicorn milestone in October of 2019. Two other Canadian companies currently qualify as unicorns – Nuvel, based in Montreal, and Coveo, based in Quebec City.
Is CEO and co-founder Martin Basiri pleased about the development?
“Of course,” Basiri said. “Especially during this [pandemic].”
ApplyBoard is a one-stop online shop that helps overseas students gain placement in high schools, colleges and universities throughout the world. Founded in 2015 by Basiri and his brothers Meti and Massi, ApplyBoard raised CDN$55 million in May of 2019, which happens to be the same year the company was named the fastest-growing technology company in Canada by Deloitte. The company is an alumnus of the Communitech Rev accelerator program.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc with the wider Canadian economy and generated particular hardship for the startup and scaleup ecosystem. Basiri said the current business environment complicated the closing of its latest round – ”It was three times harder than the normal process,” he said – but the strong ongoing fundamentals of the company remained attractive for the lead investor on the round, Drive Capital of Columbus, Ohio.
Other investors include funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada and the Business Development Bank of Canada.
Efforts to raise capital began before the pandemic hit, Basiri said, and while discussions at times proved challenging as the virus spread globally, “the partner that we found, Drive Capital – they’re thinking about the future.
“[Our] company is doing well, our traction is there,” said Basiri, who said demand for its services from universities “has spiked” since the pandemic began and that the company’s cloud-based services are particularly in demand due to the sudden worldwide need for less face-to-face contact.
“Universities, now that they can’t travel, need a product like ours for digital recruitment,” said Basiri.
“We haven’t seen any schools say they were going to shut down. Some of them are shifting their programs and schedule and moving courses online. And we’ve seen over 95 per cent of students are not changing their plans. They’re going with the plan that they had.”
ApplyBoard has customers and clients in 110 countries. It recently expanded to Great Britain in the wake of signing aboard Jo Johnson, brother of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as the chairman of its advisory board. Jo Johnson is the former British Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.
“Jo was a natural fit, aligning with our mission of marketing education accessible to students around the world through his extensive work in growing global student mobility for the U.K.,” said Basiri.
The Series C raise, Basiri said, will allow the company to “invest more in our technology, invest in our people and strengthen our relationships with our universities, our colleges and institutions that we partner with – and with our recruitment partners.
“We’re basically going to keep doing what we do so one day all the students around the world can get access to the best education globally.”
And the company will continue to hire locally and abroad – news that is particularly welcome as scores are laid off and companies shut down due to the pandemic.
“We’re looking for 70 people immediately,” said Basiri. The company currently has 400 employees, 300 of whom work out of 60,000-square feet of office space on Frederick Street – or, at least, they did before COVID-19 hit. Like many other firms, the company’s employees have been working remotely from their homes since March 12, a transition he called “a symphony of teamwork.”
Remote or no, ApplyBoard is carrying on with its mission and growth and Basiri said he hoped the news of the company’s raise would help lift spirits dampened by the pandemic.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Martin and his team because we believe ApplyBoard makes the world a better place,” said Nick Solaro, Partner at Drive Capital.
“They are fundamentally changing the way students across the globe access education.”
