Olive, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based vendor selection software company, has raised C$1 million in a seed-stage financing. The round was led by Active Capital, with participation from Techstars and Novator. Founded in 2018 by Chris Heard and Dan Harrison, Olive helps enterprise teams improve their technology buying processes.
PRESS RELEASE
Vancouver based Olive Raises $1 Million Because Buying Technology Sucks
September 28, 2020
Vancouver – Olive, the vendor selection software company, announced a new $1 million round in seed funding to empower businesses to streamline digital transformation. The round is led by Active Capital with participation from Techstars, and Novator.
Buying enterprise software is difficult, risky, and frustrating. Most companies spend months evaluating two or three technology vendors, only to end up with the wrong solution. Whether they run into snowballing customization costs, have difficulty driving adoption, or discover the most important features are missing, every company is exposed to the very real consequences of a bad software decision. Even for companies that take vendor selection seriously, spreadsheets, word documents, and in person meetings are their only tools in what is an extremely manual and tedious process today.
“We see a huge opportunity for companies to save big and move faster just by improving their buying process,” said Christopher Heard, CEO of Olive. “In today’s environment, every industry, even the traditionally more laggard ones are forced to fast forward their digital transformation. They don’t have time to evaluate solutions for months and still risk falling further behind by getting it wrong.”
Olive transforms the buying process by easily moving customers away from the archaic RFP/RFI processes to a fully agile evaluation. This leads to a much faster, far more effective decision while also increasing collaboration across stakeholders, providing assurance that 100% of solutions are evaluated, and assuring a robust and objective selection process.
“Today, buying enterprise software is full of bias & misaligned Incentives. Olive is unique in their approach & commitment to making the process more collaborative and free of bias,” lead investor Pat Matthews, Active Capital.
Olive also provides tools for software vendors to demonstrate their benefits to buyers and gain valuable insights into the needs of their prospects. By streamlining the experience for buyers, Olive is able to shorten sales cycles for vendors as well as foster stronger, longer lasting partnerships. Taking the best practices of the world’s leading technology decision makers and consultants, the company plans to become the real world olive branch between buyers and sellers.
“Balancing stakeholder requirements when evaluating technology options is an eternal pain point.” Says Sean Thompson, IT Director of Freddy’s Steakburgers. “Olive have really built a solution that I can count on to help me deliver value to our teams. No industry is untouched by digital transformation. Immediately and in the future, Olive have an opportunity to become an indispensable product for anyone tasked with IT procurement.”
To learn more about Olive and book a demo, please visit www.olive.app or email info@olive.app
About Olive
Olive is a software buyer enablement company. Founders Chris Heard and Dan Harrison have spent many years on the vendor side of the equation, seeing first hand the bias and inefficiencies of the process. They decided to help buyers by improving the process for everyone. Olive is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.
To learn more, please visit www.olive.app
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