Upchain, a Toronto-based collaborative product development platform, has secured $7.4 million in a Series A financing. Canadian venture capital firms OpenText Enterprise App Fund (OTEAF) and BDC Capital led the round. OTEAF General Partner Richard Black and BDC Partner Sean Brownlee will join the board as a result. Launched in 2015 by CEO John Laslavic, Upchain provides product life-cycle management solutions to a range of stakeholders in the product development chain, as well as post-sales support. The funds raised will be used for product enhancement and to expand the company’s sales, marketing and customer success teams.
BLOG POST (reproduced courtesy of Upchain)
Upchain Is Excited for Accelerated Growth
Since we started Upchain, we’ve been laser-focused on making collaboration easier for everyone in the value chain and bringing a collaborative product development process to as many people as possible.
And recently, we’ve taken a huge step forward.
We’re happy to report that we’ve closed our series A round for $7.4 million, led by OpenText Enterprise App Fund (OTEAF) and BDC Ventures (BDC). These are two of the most respected venture capital funds in Canada and have successfully invested in companies like ScribbleLive and Radian6 (acquired by Salesforce).
It’s not only an enormous step for the company, but it’s an enormously humbling experience for me. When I started Upchain in 2015, I had no idea how far the journey would take me, and I never dreamed of counting giants like OTEAF and BDC as partners. Their deep experience in reforging enterprise industries and markets with best-in-class technical solutions makes them the ideal partners for us as we grow.
I’m so proud of the Upchain team, and I’m excited to see where the journey takes us next.
The plan
Our mission is to bring integrated and connected data to everyone in the value chain and empower producers, stakeholders, businesses, and customers to work together to create something better than the sum of its parts.
Our series A funding will help us:
Fuel rapid product development
Drive even better customer experiences
Grow our go to market team (sales, marketing, and customer success & support).
We’re already exploding with product feature ideas for our customers so it’s even easier for them to get the information they need with the tools they’ve already got. We want Upchain to be the best part of our customer’s day, and we won’t stop until we get there.
Grow our team
Our success starts and ends with our incredibly talented team. Our philosophy is empowering collaboration, and we live and breathe that every single day. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people striving not just to grow individually, but to collectively build something amazing.
We’re already expanding both our Croatian and Toronto teams, and we plan on adding 60+ team members over the next 10 months (you can see our openings right here).
I’m so proud of what Upchain has achieved so far, and beyond excited for what the future holds.
John Laslavic, Founder & CEO
Photo courtesy of Upchain Inc