Things looking up for local roofing company

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This article was published 30/03/2022 (1629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In its efforts to provide an ever-expanding suite of services to help entrepreneurs get their business off the ground, North Forge Technology Exchange now has a venture capital partner.

Technically the partner, Red Leaf Capital, isn’t there to provide investments, but rather to give one-on-one feedback and technical assistance for companies who have grown to the point where serious equity investment is required.

The idea is to provide a bridge between their startups and venture capitalists.

Joelle Foster, North Forge’s CEO, said “It’s easy enough to train someone to pitch properly but we are there trying to help them truly understand what it is they are pitching and to be prepared for what they are going to be asked.”

Red Leaf, a relatively small $5 million fund, has an office at North Forge’s site in the Innovation Hub at the University of Manitoba’s Smartpark and can even see some of the founders pass through the incubator’s four stages of its founder program from figuring out if an idea is worth starting a business around, developing the product and getting market validation, to commercializing the product.

After a company has successfully attracted customers, the final stage is figuring out how to grow or scale the market reach. Typically, additional capital is required for that stage.

Shane Li, CEO of Red Leaf, said at the early stages venture capital funds will not want to have anything to do the with the company.

But when the company does need investment to scale its business, the company needs to know things like the valuation of the company.

“When talking with venture capital funds the company needs to have an overall capital strategy and it needs to understand the fair market value of the company at that time,” Li said.

Often times venture capital comes in stages with a new valuation with every successive series of capital raises.

With its offices at the Innovation Hub, Red Leaf is already getting to know some of the 130 companies in development at North Forge and the fund already has a couple in its portfolio.

Last week, it closed on another — a $500,000 investment in the construction-tech startup, called RoofBundle Inc.

RoofBundle is just about to release its automated job-quotation app for the roofing industry, so it’s still at the development stage, but Li said he’d spent time with RoofBundle’s founder, David Peters and saw the rapid development that had taken place in a short period of time.

“They came to North Forge with just an idea 18 months ago,” said Li. “They have grown very quickly. We can see the growth and traction there. We are very confident with the company and the people, which is the most important element.”

Peters said he knew nothing about technology when he decided to try to solve the problem of onerous time consumption for roofing companies doing job quotes. There are template tools to put quotes together, but none that will spit out a job quote with just the dimensions of the job at hand.

“I’ve already got 15 employees so that $500,000 if going to go fast,” Peters sad with a chuckle. “Sales will need to skyrocket this year, but we are going to put every effort into making sure the software is a success.”

Peters said that coming into the project with “no technical skills, none whatsoever” he took the approach to go step by step not worrying about the long term.

The opportunities to network at North Forge allowed him to have several conversations with Shane Li without even thinking that the firm would invest in RoofBundle.

“I’ve never raised money before, but I would say having some momentum and a lot of conviction in what you are doing helps in the process,” he said.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca