From bootstrapping to 50m funding & 25m ARR in 24 months with Andrew Butt of Enable.com

Andrew Butt, CEO, and co-founder of Enable, discusses how he gained interest in Enable, raising his initial funding, building the MVP, and navigating zero to product-market fit to hit 25 million ARR. Listen to the podcast for more insights.  

Enable is a cloud-based collaboration platform for boosting the performance of B2B deals. It also improves operational efficiency and financial transparency. Enable was launched in 2015 and is used in various industries to evaluate, negotiate, and perform intricate trading agreements to push for profitable growth. Andrew, the CEO and co-founder talks to Geordie about his journey.  

What You’ll Learn 

• How Andrew came up with the Enable idea
• How Andrew and his team transitioned from customized software to a genuine product
• What problem was Andrew attempting to solve from the beginning?
• Importance of pivoting to a SaaS model early
• Andrew’s experience of raising capital in the US
• While Andrew and his team decided to raise cash
• Difference between Enable’s series A and series B funding
• Why Silicon Valley is ideal for entrepreneurs seeking to grow their SaaS companies

In This Episode: 

Enable works with different companies along the supply chain who join efforts to deliver products to consumers. Andrew says their end customers are wholesalers, distributors, and eCommerce retailers. Enable also collaborates with manufacturers.  

Having a robust software development background was instrumental in helping Andrew navigate the industry with ease. He has built and grown various software development companies that develop software for a wide range of companies.

Everything Andrew does is an opportunity to learn different businesses and their requirements, and identifying existing gaps in the market. Listen to Andrew as he narrates how increasing customer demands pushed them into coming up with the Enable idea.

At some point, they had to develop custom software to meet the growing customer demands. Their customers kept growing, and that is when they realized the need to build a genuine product instead of customizing software every time.

Shifting from customized software to an authentic product can be a complex task. However, Andrew says they experienced fewer struggles. Find out why from the podcast. To fund the MVP development, Andrew says they used cash flow from their core business, an act he says helped them bootstrap for a while.  

From the beginning, Andrew and his team were keen on solving business-to-business rebates problems. He explains this problem comprehensively in this podcast.

Having numerous customers flowing your way in search of a robust solution is uncommon in many businesses. Andrew attributes this to the fact that he and his co-founder are in the distribution industry.

Dennis, his co-founder, runs DCS group, the biggest distributor in the United Kingdom. The two collaborated to form their software development company, through which they met many prospects every day.

Andrew says their first rebate management solution customer came from Dennis’s industry. He mentions how someone they knew referred them to a different sector. Find out what happened next from the podcast. Andrew also narrates their experience with their first customer and how they collaborated to build their solution. You will also learn how they finally pivoted along the way.  

Transitioning from an agency to a SaaS was exciting and challenging because they were bootstrapping. As a result, focusing on their SaaS product entirely at that stage would have been impossible. Learn how they navigated that period from the podcast.  

Marketing plays a significant role in business. Andrew says they had a small sales team whose work was to find customers through outbound marketing. They were also performing well on organic Google search, and potential customers were finding them under rebate management software.

As their business grew, Andrew and his team decided to raise capital in the US instead of the UK. What challenges did they face during this phase? According to Andrew, raising funds in the US is different from the UK. He highlights some of these differences, and you can learn about them in the podcast.

Businesses encounter numerous challenges, and Enable is no exception. Andrew talks about some of the challenges they faced along the way. One of the key challenges is ensuring that everyone is happy and that the team is positive and engaged. Andrew says. Finding excellent engineers and onboarding them can also be a daunting task.

Andrew discusses their strategy of hiring and retaining a team of professional engineers. Andrew concludes the podcast by highlighting the importance of bootstrapping and finding product-market fit before investing colossal sums of money.  

Resources 

Andrew Butt LinkedIn

Enable