Enable is a rapidly growing software tech company that specializes in cloud based B2B (business to business) rebate management solutions. B2B companies can run into obstacles when managing the data that shows which customer deserves what value rebate at what benchmark. This obstacle is what Enable aims to solve.
Enable expanded to the Toronto Region just last year and has experienced tremendous growth in that time. Enable recently landed $94 million in funding to add to its Toronto team and maintain its high-quality services. We sat down with Enable CEO and Co-founder Andrew Butt to discuss how the Enable team is managing this growth and what brought them to this point.
Q: How has Enable grown since first landing in the Toronto Region over a year ago?
At this time last year, we had 25 employees in Toronto, and were making a bet on the city as our North American operational headquarters. Now we just onboarded our 128th Enablee (Enable employee) in the Toronto office. The growth has been astonishing, and Toronto’s talent pool has helped us keep pace.
Overall, by the end of this year we’ll have 435 employees throughout the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. We will continue to hire and build the team across all departments and geographies in the coming year. This has been a big year of growth for us. In Toronto specifically, we’re hiring for sales, product, engineering, marketing, finance, people, customer success, information technology, and workplaces. At the start of the year, we had one floor in our building at 545 King Street West and had no idea how we would use all that space. Fast forward to today, and we’ve just taken on an additional floor in Toronto, giving us a total of nearly 15,000 square feet.
Q: How has the experience been operating in the Toronto Region?
We selected Toronto as the headquarters for our North American operations because of its amazing tech talent pool. This combined with the overall quality of life, the walkability of the city – especially in the downtown area where we’re based – and the unique cultural aspects the city exudes.
Finally, it’s such an easy place to get to and such a lovely city to spend time in. Our global teams regularly gather in Toronto because of how easy it is for us to travel and connect there.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
We want to keep creating an immense amount of value for our customers so that we can continue to help ease the friction that exists in today’s supply chain. If we can do this well, not only is this good for Enable and our continued growth in the rebate management category, but it’s also good for businesses overall. The more seamlessly they can serve as an extension of one another, the easier it is to build a healthy, thriving ecosystem at every stage of the supply chain.
When this happens, it’s great for the partners in the supply chain, the businesses and consumers that are on the buying end of the supply chain, and the overall diversity of the supply chain. The more diverse, local, and seamless we can make our supply chain, the more resilient it will be. That’s what we want to solve, and we’ll keep building with our clients and increasing their collaborative partners until we get there.
Q: What kind of talent is Enable looking to hire in the Toronto Region?
Our North American revenue and customer success teams operate out of Toronto, so we’re always looking for more candidates to support our efforts there. We also have members of our product, engineering, marketing, finance, people, information technology, and workplaces teams in Toronto. Each of these teams has grown quite a bit in Toronto already this year.
Q: What is your most valued philosophy or motto for running a business?
Always talk with your customers, those who you’d like to be your customers, those that look like your customers, or those that are around them. I aim to meet new people every day. Some of this happens naturally when helping to sell the value of Enable and when meeting with customers, there’s almost always a new face in the room.
Meeting new people in general can be very helpful to understanding your market, your fit, and what additional problems you might be able to solve. So, it is important to think of investors, customers, other founders and CEOs, thought leaders, and yes, prospects. I’ve experienced the most success in the least likely connections. It’s serendipity, and it’s fueled a lot of Enable’s success.
To learn more about Enable and their supply chain rebate management software, visit their website.