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If Bridgit rings a bell, you have probably read one of the many articles on the tech company’s rise on the Globe & Mail, BetaKit, Forbes, or the Financial Post; Two young female entrepreneurs, making waves in the construction industry.
In this episode of the Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast, Eric Janssen speaks to Mallorie Brodie, HBA ’13, and Lauren Lake, B.E.Sc '13, about their journey of discovering entrepreneurship, starting a company through Next36, raising money, the challenge of hiring, and pivoting to stay relevant in a competitive industry.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session
Eric Janssen
Okay here with Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake from Bridgette, thanks so much for making the time. I appreciate you coming in.
Lauren Lake
Thanks for having us.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, of course, I have a lot to cover with you. You've had a really well documented story in the media starting as to student almost entrepreneurs. But I want to rewind way, way, way back to the beginning when you started your entrepreneurial journey. And maybe even before that, Was there someone in either of your families that sort of encouraged you to be an entrepreneur or was an entrepreneur and you thought, Hmm, that's looks like something that I might be interested in doing? Where did this all get started?
Lauren Lake
So for me, I was studying in civil engineering, and I never really saw a path and entrepreneurship for myself, even though I did have family members who were very entrepreneurial. I just didn't really see that that was what I was going to do. I think because I wasn't in business school, I didn't feel like I had the skill set. And so when I came across an entrepreneurship program, towards the end of university, I was really excited. I think I was always intrigued to start my own business, but just didn't feel like I had that foundation. And so applying to the program was kind of my way to get to know more about what that would look like. But it wasn't something that growing up I really thought I would be in.
Eric Janssen
So you Was it a program at the University that you're at, or where was the program,
Lauren Lake
it was the next 36 it's called next Canada now. And that's how Mallorie and I actually first met, we didn't know each other at the time, even though we were both studying at Western I was an engineering and Mallory was an Ivey, so we had never crossed paths until independently applying to the same program and finding out we were at the same school.
Eric Janssen
So that's not like a dip your toe in the water next 36 is a pretty serious program. How did you that's a pretty big commitment to make not really knowing if entrepreneurship was for you.
Lauren Lake
I think I knew deep down that I was it was something I was really interested in. And I think if I really were to think hard on it, I think I was always like throughout University getting more and more interested. But just feeling like it was an unknown to me. And so I was more than happy to make the commitment to the program. And I was like very confident in doing that. I just felt like that was a more secure way for me to get into it versus Mallory, who had been kind of doing entrepreneurial initiatives, like for some time before applying to the program.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So then Mallorie, I know you and I had met years ago, where did you get started, what I would encourage you to sign up for next 36.
Mallorie Brodie
So I always had, you know, been starting clubs in high school and starting different initiatives, but I never put the term entrepreneurship on it. And it was actually upon applying to Ivy and Western that I got this scholarship from Ivy for the pre acceptance program, just saying that, you know, if you decide to go to Ivy, and you'll enter the entrepreneurship certificate program, then you get the scholarship. And it's for the entrepreneurial success you've had today. And I was like, did they send this to the wrong person because I haven't started a business. And it was I guess, through all the clubs and everything that I had started in high school that they recognize the same sort of characteristics as as being an entrepreneur and starting an actual business. And so that was the first time that it occurred to me that this actually could be a feasible feasible path upon graduation. And so I started my first company, start gallery, which is something that you mentored me on, I remember panicking over how to register a company and use it just Google it and pay the 80 bucks, and you're done. It will be much harder after that. So that was kind of the first step in that business ultimately was not successful. But I knew that, you know, I really enjoyed the experience of starting that company. And it encouraged me to apply for the next 36. So I could get a little bit more formal training around it and a little bit of funding, hopefully, if the company got off the ground. And that was sort of my way of legitimising starting a company and not going the typical career path after graduation.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So next 36 in a nutshell, what is that program for people that are familiar with it.
Mallorie Brodie
So basically, they take at least a year they took 72 students from across Canada after they had applied for an application they brought you in for a finalist weekend then picked 36 and split that group into three teams of 12. And from there you essentially had the first night and then ultimately the the entire nine months to come up with a business idea. You know, hopefully find investors for the business if that's the path you want it to go down and launch your company. So for us we were entering without an idea without any money to start the business with and without a business partner and we got all of that through the program
Eric Janssen
Neat! so they took you through the process of like ideation validation, how would you potentially pitch this or sell this like the whole process, and that's where so you two met there you were paired up on a team of 12
Lauren Lake
it was 12 teams of 31
Mallorie Brodie
We always say that Lauren's here to kind of quality check. So I come up with ideas. And then Lauren fixes all the ideas out.
Lauren Lake
Yeah, so we were randomly put on the same team. And so it was just an odd coincidence that, we really were aligned from day one, we had really complementary skill sets, we had this great chemistry that just happened. And I don't think that's very common. But for us, it just ended up working out that way. And then we ended up, there were three people on our team. And we didn't really have the same vision. Mallorie and I were very aligned from day one. And our third team member just had a different kind of end goal in mind. And so we ended up splitting kind of early on and continuing on just the two of us.
Eric Janssen
Got it. So you arrived at the construction industry? Because I understand both of your families have sort of background in it, right?
Mallorie Brodie
Yep. So my grandfather had a demolition company, great grandfather at a steel company. And then Lauren's family, her grandfather, as well had a specialty trade contractor. So we both grew up at least knowing about the industry. And then Lauren had some on site experience as well as the the degree in civil engineering.
Eric Janssen
Got it. Cool. So you understood the little bit about the industry? How did the initial idea though come to be what did you how did you figure it out?
Lauren Lake
Yeah, so I had spent a little bit of time on site, like literally just as a co op student. And so I had just seen kind of how the site operated, I spent time working with different sites, and just understanding that there was very little technology that was being used. So when Mallorie and I started talking, that's kind of where the conversation started was just around, you know, Isn't it odd that everybody has, you know, a cell phone, you know, smartphone with them at all times, yet, everyone's using pen and paper on site. And it was really just quick google searches. At that point, we've realized we had this shared family background that was interesting. And we started calling all of the friends and family, we could just asking them what their experience in the industry was. So just trying to reach out to people we knew, had some construction experience and asking them what they felt the challenges were. And so that's what led us to our very first concept, which we just came up with kind of that first day in the program, which was around a mobile app for construction teams to do daily logs. It wasn't what we ended up pursuing. But it got us on that path of kind of thinking about mobile technology, and why it wasn't being used on the job site at that time. But it was really just through talking to people who were in the industry and trying to get their perspective.
Eric Janssen
So that was like literally day one, you came up with that idea. And next 36
Lauren Lake
that was day one, that was the first night of the program, they kind of put this time pressure on you to come up with your first idea that night and presented the next morning. So we had a few hours to kind of get that together. So that was the very first concept. We came up with a name Bridgette that night as well. We pitched it the next morning, we had overall like good feedback. But the one thing that came up because people in the audience were not from construction. They felt like it was an unrealistic idea. They said, this is good in theory, but you're never going to get construction teams to use technology on site. It's just too old school, it's not going to happen. And so that's what led us to doing our true on site research that lasted the next six months, where we just drove around two construction sites and talk to people and tried to get their perspective and their understanding and realize that that really wasn't true. People on site really wanted to leverage technology, they just didn't feel like they had the tools that they needed.
Eric Janssen
So I'd love to go into some detail here on how you got that feedback. Because I often get the question like I have this idea for an app. Where should I go get it developed? And so you said you had the idea initially got some feedback from the judges, it sounds like in the next 36 that were like maybe not gonna work in the industry. You kept going anyway. And then what did you show up on site with just talking? Did you
Lauren Lake
doughnuts
Eric Janssen
doughnuts. Okay, so you have food? So how did that go? Like, what would your first meeting go like to get feedback on site for this idea?
Mallorie Brodie
Yeah. So we got back to the Western campus. And it was actually when the new Ivey building was under construction, and just a block away from where Lauren was living at the time. So we basically walked on the site with coffee and donuts, and we said, Hey, can we have 10 minutes of your time where students were doing research on a project? And they said, Okay, sure. Sounds good. We have five or 10 minutes for you. And we just started asking, you know, what's challenging for you on site, what's frustrating? What takes too much time, what costs a lot of money. And now is sort of the first of many, many interviews that we did. And the Ivey building, we actually ended up shadowing them many, many mornings on site. So we would just come back and follow them around, watch what they were doing, look at kind of all the paperwork they had on their site office. And it was this site. That was the first one that talked to us about the punch list, management process or deficiency management. And that's kind of what prompted us to actually start designing the app and what it should look like and how it should work.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So they literally like just let you follow Have them around and watch them and see how they put information in their computers or not or not computers?
Mallorie Brodie
Yeah, I think the reason they like, allowed us to keep coming back was because every time we came back, we had doughnuts and coffee. But we also had made progress. And so they, I think it builds confidence that we are serious about this. And we really wanted to launch something. So they weren't just wasting their time, they were actually going to get the solution they had been looking for out of giving us some of their time upfront.
Eric Janssen
So day one, you show up with doughnuts and coffee and some ideas. As it progressed, what were you bringing back to them to show them that you were making progress?
Lauren Lake
Yes, we ended up doing that over 500 times over those six months. 100 meetings? 500? Yes. Wow. And that was because we were also just really understanding the industry at this point. So it was a lot of groundwork kind of research to begin with. And then trying to understand what all the different challenges were, and figuring out where our focus point was going to be. But we kept coming back with kind of the next iteration of our product. And so as like a,
Eric Janssen
like an actual app, or like, no
Lauren Lake
screenshots like what did you it was not a real app, because neither of us are software engineers, neither of us could actually code the app, which was very frustrating. But it forced us to really be diligent in that research process. So what we ended up doing was, it started off as just hand drawn kind of screenshots in a notebook, and just bringing that to the site and saying how would this work, you click on this button, and we would flip the page. And you know, this is what you see. Now you take a picture, flip the page. And so we went from that to building out more, you know, just PowerPoint slides with what the app would look like. We had different sites kind of trial, different apps that had components that we thought would be useful in our product, to try and figure out is this actually useful feature for you? Is it worth us building something like this? Or does it not add value, so we had one concept early on where we thought it would be helpful for people on site to take photos, and then be able to mark them up and add text and you know, you know, hand circles or arrows. And so we downloaded a free app onto a bunch of people's phones. And we said, use this for the next week, we'll come back in a week from now, and we're gonna see what you've done. And so we go back to the site, that was actually the site, we came back a week later. And they were like, this is amazing. We've taken so many photos, we sent these pictures to our electrician, and they knew exactly what we were talking about, we added the measurements onto this. And so we were like, Okay, perfect, we're going to add this same feature into our products. But we didn't need to build that to test it. So we did a bunch of things like that just to kind of validate whether or not things would be valuable to them, but in a way that was free, and didn't require any coding from us. So that happened over and over again. And the sites were very willing to be part of that, because they wanted to be part of the process. I think it was exciting for a lot of sites to have their say, when it came to technology. We had another site that allowed us to come back every Thursday morning and sit in on their job site meetings. So we just got to hear kind of be fly on the wall. And just hear what everyone was saying what the arguments were just get a better feel for the challenges on site.
Eric Janssen
That's neat. So a lot of students as part of the program, we have this new venture project, and the new venture project, a lot of these customer surveys are typically like survey 200 people and give you this like super high level data. Sounds like you, over time went to had 500 separate meetings, but you went super deep with a couple people and like really day to day understood how they were using things today and piloted things super cheaply. So you went really deep rather than super broad.
Mallorie Brodie
I remember like doing some of those surveys and everything when I would have done the new vendor project. And I definitely always saw it as being like a burden in a way. And I'm like, the step we have to do before we complete the rest of the project, we must do these survey interviews. And I think for some reason, when, like, you're literally about to spend money on this thing, you want to make sure you're spending money on the right thing, and you're not going to have to do rework down the road. It was like the only way and so even now when we're thinking about product development, and we're a 45 person company now, we don't have these debates in the boardroom about what we should build, we go out and we talk to the customers, because they're ultimately the ones who can best describe what their pain points are. So I think it's, it's when you're really about to actually invest in something, making sure that you're genuinely interested in curious about what your customers pain points may be, as opposed to seeing it as the step that you just have to do to check off a box.
Lauren Lake
Yeah, and we started really open ended. So it wasn't, it wasn't from day one. Like we were doing these really focused surveys. It was very broad questions like what Mallory said, you know, what's the biggest frustration in your day, and every interview would go a different direction. And it was challenging at that time to figure out what the focus point for us should be because there were endless opportunities we found within the construction industry and so we had to be really careful That we weren't trying to go too wide, too quickly, we knew that it was just the two of us. We had limited money at that time. So we really wanted to pick something super focused and do a good job of that before just trying to do everything.
Eric Janssen
All right. Yeah, it's interesting. And you and the fact that you used other apps that had features similar to the ones that you wanted, and actually had them try those out first is really smart. That's smart. Okay, so then eventually, you get to a point where you have an idea of what they want, you arrive after hundreds and hundreds of meetings at a solution that you think is good, then what? How did you get this thing built?
Mallorie Brodie
So by then we're out probably month five, or six and the next 36. And so we had a little bit of funding through through the program, so probably 20,000, or $30,000. And so what we decided to do was hire Co Op students from the University of Waterloo. And we hired two first year students. And we essentially said, Okay, here's what this looks like. In addition to the students, we hired someone that was an experienced product manager on contracts, or just to literally put in a couple hours a week to help us manage those developers. And the goal was to get a product out the door by the end of the summer. So a few months later, and we did it somehow, some way with first year engineering students. And that able, that enabled us to raise a $250,000 round of angel financing, get our first couple of customers paying to do the beta test. And really, that's sort of where things really started to become very real for for Bridgette.
Eric Janssen
And did you those early customers, were they some of the people that you originally were meeting with to develop it with?
Mallorie Brodie
So the specific first customer was not one of our research contacts. But many of those research contacts did turn into customers. And I think that's another reason why that the research is valuable is because it essentially becomes your sales pipeline, when you actually launch the product. So all of a sudden, you have 500 people that have been engaged in this process, that could become your customer very quickly, as opposed to starting just from scratch. So yeah, a bunch of them did become customers.
Eric Janssen
Do you remember who was the first customer?
Lauren Lake
Yes, we remember it very well. They're still a customer. today. I was a large general contractor, just north of Toronto. And we pretty much started our sales process by just having a list of the largest GCS in the Toronto area, and starting to send cold emails out. So we kind of divided the list, we start emailing people saying we have this new product, would you be free to meet so we can show it to you. And at least I don't know about Mallorie. But at least I don't think I was prepared to get a response back. I think I just thought, okay, we'll keep sending these emails and see what happens. And you know, a couple hours later, we get a reply from the president of one of the largest GCS in the Toronto area saying, you know, sure, come by my office on Friday. And so that was when we had to start thinking about, you know, what are we going to charge for this product? What does the actual sale look like? But that became that company became our first customer. And then that kind of triggered us closing the next 10 beta customers and using that, to get our first kind of set of real on site feedback.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So sales for a second, the sounds like very product focused in the beginning for both of you, then you were like, great, we have a product, we have something to sell, let's just, I don't know, guess you would have developed it with general contractors, right? So you knew you knew who it was for and the pain that you were solving? So you had a pretty narrow idea, like, what did you categorize by geography? Because you wanted to be able to service them in your area, but then sighs like, how did you figure out that initial list?
Mallorie Brodie
We just contacted contractors that were the same size of companies we did research with that identified this as being a problem, basically. So we knew right away, we were selling to general contractors, and subcontractors would use the app, but they wouldn't be the customer. So all of that had been really just become quite obvious through the research process.
Eric Janssen
And did you learn about the how they were going to buy this from that process as well,
Mallorie Brodie
That came more through the actual sales meetings that we ended up having. And it was really just a lot of trial and error. So testing out different pricing models along the way. And we went through three or four different pricing models on that first product, before arriving at kind of the final model that we found really worked. But it really was just trying different things, trying to understand what the friction points would be for the customer during that sales process and understanding if the pricing was part of that. There wasn't really any science to it at that point. And yeah, it was bit by bit, tweaking that and trying to understand how much value are we actually adding to the site and then you know, what somebody's willing to pay and how do we make sure that that's captured and how we price this?
Eric Janssen
Mallorie you didn't come to her rescue as the business school student and say like, like business plan 101 like pricing promotion. How are we gonna sell this?
Mallorie Brodie
I always learned by doing and so there was, I had a lot of, I'd say known unknowns coming into coming out of coming out of school, where I knew accounting was a thing, or I knew marketing was a thing and the details of those things, but I didn't know in depth how to necessarily go about them in the real world. So I knew that like, we should be, you know, hiring a bookkeeper, or that we should be putting together a marketing plan. But then, when it came to the meat of those actual plans, we definitely just had to test a lot of things in market, because you learn about all these different tactics, but you don't actually know what's going to resonate with your customers. So for instance, like our customers aren't buying from seeing Instagram pictures. So social was not going to be a channel that we would sell through. So we had to, like, really learn that through our own process. So I don't know how much my business background, I think it helped, hopefully.
Lauren Lake
But we also made the decision to charge for those beta testing customers, like at the last minute, going into that meeting, we thought we were going to give the beta version out for free, in order to get lots of beta customers. And I think, hours before the meeting happened that we just kind of looked at each other and said, Does this make sense? Like, are we going to learn anything, if we give this away for free, you know, anyone will take something for free, even if it's just to be polite. And so we said, even if somebody doesn't pay much money for this, it's better for them to pay something. And at least we validate that they're willing to write a check and go through that, that process. And so it was a very last minute decision to like, actually try to get some money for it versus going the free route. And so that was kind of what sparked like, Okay, well, if we're going to charge something, then what should that be? The app was also so buggy at that time, it was it didn't have any design elements to it. Like it was very rough. And so also trying to understand maybe in the future, we can charge on this more sophisticated pricing model at this higher price point. But what would somebody actually pay for like this very early version?
Eric Janssen
Yeah. It's funny, but you're really smart to go about it that way. You know, so many people spend time on what I call playing business, like, tweak your logo, make sure your website's perfect. We need we need well published case studies, maybe we should work on some PR,
Mallorie Brodie
Perfect financial model.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, like, let's tweak the financial model a little bit more. Oh, like, should we price it like this? Or like that? You were just like, Look, we have a product? Let's just start sending emails. Do you have a website? Like where they could they see a website that you
Mallorie Brodie
maybe like a launch rock? Like landing something? Yeah,
Lauren Lake
yeah, something I think
Lauren Lake
we would send, like some different screenshots, or we had like a bit of a one pager, one pager that we would send. But I think that was one of the things coming out of engineering that kind of scared me away from this entrepreneurial dream I had in the back of my head. And I kind of kept forcing myself to just like, forget about it, because I felt like I didn't have kind of all of those, I guess, key foundation pieces. And I think getting into it, I realized, like, those are all great things that Mallorie had through Ivey. But at the end of the day, it was just a lot of trial and error. And so we didn't, at that point, like there wasn't any perfect pricing model we were going to come up with because we didn't know yet what someone was willing to pay for the product. And so we could have debated all we wanted over. Like the best way to do that. But at the end of the day, we just had to go and say a number and see if the person if the company laughed at it, or if they thought it was crazy expensive.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, it's interesting. There's a I think it's Marie Forleo, who says everything is figured out. Just like, you know, we're just gonna start doing things. And yeah, it's probably a bunch of things that we should figure out. But we'll just figure that out when we need to. Yep. Okay, so then you get your first few customers, you went on to be seated. Part of you were part of the creative destruction lab, and after that ended up raising a pretty big seed round. So you raised a couple 100 grand out of next 36 and then did a proper seed of 2.2 million.
Mallorie Brodie
Yep. So in total, we've done about $11 million of fundraising on the equity side, and 2.2 was the seed 6.7 and a quarter roughly was the series A and then we did a bunch of kind of convertible notes and Angel rounds in between. But the creative destruction lab, I think the biggest thing that generated interest in that round was there was one individual who had run a construction company, and in front of the full room of all the MBA students, all the investors, all the advisors, as part of the program, said that this was the biggest pain point he experienced throughout his entire career in the industry. And he had sold his business so he put his hand up to invest and then of course, 10 other people did as well. And that really prompted kind of that fundraising from that program.
Eric Janssen
So 2.2 in the bank, so people often look at once you raise money is like great, now we've got money, we can relax a little bit. So you'd raised a couple 100 grand then you raise 2.2 and You went to the beach, I'm sure right? What would happen after you raise the two and a half?
Mallorie Brodie
I think the thing people forget about when they raise money is, you know, you think all your problems have been solved. But now you have investors that are expecting you to hit the next set of milestones. So it actually becomes in a lot of ways more stressful. And there's more pressure once you have people that have decided to back you, because we wanted to make sure that we absolutely not only got them their money back, but also a nice healthy return on that investment. So we were always planning in parallel to actually the fundraising. The second that money was in the bank, what were all the things we were going to execute on? Who do we need to hire, so who should we be interviewing today, so we're ready to hire them. The second we did have the money, and just making sure everything was perfectly planned. So we could act very quickly. Because there's also this big, you can't wait to ramp up because you only have limited time before the next round of financing. So you need to make sure that you can actually start showing results quickly with that funding, as opposed to waiting to six months before you're out of cash, increasing your spend and not having time to show the results. So being able to just react very quickly after the round, I think was critical. And I think we always did a good job of that.
Eric Janssen
It's interesting, it's that balancing act, you almost need to your point on the hiring side, you need to build the talent pipeline. So get the people ready so that when the money's in the bank, you can pull the trigger on the hire right away versus Great. Now we've got money, and now we should
Mallorie Brodie
buy Yeah, and you've done nothing. So.
Eric Janssen
So the demands, the pressure went up with the 2.2. But there's a period of time between the 2.2 and you had just under a year ago, raise your last six or seven. Right? So when did you raise the two and a half. And then how much time was between that and your most recent raise,
Lauren Lake
the two and a half would have been 20 1617, it was two or three years 16 to
Eric Janssen
- Okay, so
Lauren Lake
During that time, we were growing our first product, Bridgette fields, and then the series A was really raised around our new product launch. And that just launched about six months ago. And that's Bridget bench. And so when we raised the series A, we were still in the research and early phases of the second product, but we were able to generate a lot of excitement around what that product would be. And we had done kind of that same research process all over again with the new product, and then raise that money, use that money to accelerate the development of Bridget bench and launch that June of this year.
Eric Janssen
Cool when you raise the 2.2. So now there's big demands to prove out whatever you had started, how did you go about growing?
Mallorie Brodie
So one major thing was we invested in the product and development team. And I think the obvious thing sometimes is Oh, you want to grow your revenue, higher, more sales reps, but what we were finding was that if we could just increase the conversion rate of the deals that our sales reps were working on of their pipeline, then we didn't necessarily need more reps. So we were looking at what would get them to get a yes, from a customer five out of 10 people they talked to versus two out of every 10 they talked to. And a lot of that came to different features that customers felt like the product was missing. So we really invested a lot in design and development, to be able to add different features and use cases to the product. And that made it easier for the same size sales team to sell more more deals. Essentially,
Eric Janssen
I'm interested in digging into that, in my time here at Ivy to try to figure out the balance between early salespeople, like just shut up and sell what we have no, we don't need more building more stuff, like just sell the stuff we have, versus listening to customers and building in those new features. So like, Who were your first salespeople? And did you have a product person that they worked with? How did you manage that?
Mallorie Brodie
Our first salespeople were really just us before we even hired a sales team, we kind of mimicked what we thought the sales process would look like by the two of us playing different roles. So initially, Mallorie kind of played the role of being the we call them business development reps, but kind of the top of funnel person so Mallorie was looking to book meetings, and just trying to get kind of that pipeline generated. And then she would pass those meetings off to me. And I would kind of act as the account executive talk about pricing, demo the product and close the deal. And so we did that for a while to try and figure out, does that flow actually work? Does it work for our customers? And is this something that we feel like could be repeated by a sales team. And so once we had proven that out with the two of us, then we started to hire very junior sales, team members at that point. But it's always been a balance of trying to sell what we have today, but also understanding that our product is never done. And it's it's always been a work in progress and development. So we really rely on the sales team to like, yes, so we have today and make sure that given the product today, the customer can be successful with it. But also using that as an opportunity to get feedback and use that to pass on to the product teams that we're building the right features going forward.
Eric Janssen
So Would you first replace the top of funnel? You stayed on as the
Lauren Lake
We both would just then be the account execs essentially. And then eventually we hired account execs to backfill what we had been doing. And I mean, even to this day, like we both do some sales based on certain relationships we have in the industry. So I don't know that that ever totally stops. But there's a sales team to kind of support the actual revenue forecasts that we that we have in place.
Eric Janssen
Got it. So then the big I guess the big change lately has been the launch the full launch of the new product. So why the change? Why the change from what you had in the beginning to the new products that is going really well today?
Mallorie Brodie
Yeah, there was always a lot of like, really positive feedback, we got on the first product, Bridget field from our customers, and the industry loved it, it was new for the industry. So all of that was great. I feel like we did a good job with that. But there's two changes. One was that it started becoming much more competitive. So there was companies in the US that had significantly more funding that were also starting to compete in the same space. And that was the first thing. And the second thing was over time, we realized it didn't have a recurring revenue model. So we'd sell on a per project basis, which meant that, you know, 1218 months later, you're losing that revenue. And when it comes to the world of tech company, valuations are very much based on how recurring your revenue is, just because it ends up being less expensive for the business over time. So we felt like, you know, in order to really give our investors the best return possible, we needed a business model that was going to be recurring. So we went out to the industry did the exact same research process, again, just didn't need to talk to as many people. And we're looking for a product that we could sell on that recurring business model at the enterprise level. So we did that we kind of checked off the boxes of the things we were the objectives that we had set for the second product, launched it, and it's performed exactly as we anticipated.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So the first one, could you have just changed the pricing model on it? Or was it it was the way that the product or service was packaged, that you could never turn into a recurring revenue type thing.
Mallorie Brodie
So we did try multiple times to turn it into more of a recurring model. And that was always the intent, we thought that as we signed on more projects, we would be able to convert those customers from paying on a per project basis to paying for a company wide license, that would be you know, recurring and annual. And we just found that the customer didn't want to buy that way. Because we were selling a site solution, a field based solution, it really only delivered value while that project was under construction. And it was something that would happen differently on every single site. And so for the most part, the contractors wanted to pass that cost off and you know, have that part of the project budget versus part of their overhead expense. So for them to buy it at the corporate level just really didn't make sense to them. Even if a company would mandate our tool in their company, they would still ask for every site to pay for it and work it into their budget separately, depending on kind of how that project was operating. So it just didn't end up being something the customer was interested in doing. Even if they could save a bit of money, even if we discounted the price, they still wanted to split that up across their projects. So we were able to do a couple things, we were able to get project commitments from people so we could get a year's worth of projects committed ahead of time and things like that. That helped somewhat and we did get a few enterprise deals from certain customers, but it wasn't going to convert magically to being not unless we found a product that added value at the corporate level and not just at the field level.
Eric Janssen
Got it. So the I think I understand that. So the new product is not just something that the people on site would use to distribute the work or monitor the work. The new one is tackling like they're using it in corporate office to allocate resources.
Mallorie Brodie
Yeah. So it's a workforce planning tool, Bridgette bench. And it's used by the operations team in the office to manage all of their people and all of their projects. So it doesn't matter what stage each of those projects is at. They're always planning their resources. And it's that's happening on an ongoing basis. So for them to pay for that, at the kind of enterprise level just makes a lot of sense. And so that's something that we wanted to ensure that we weren't selling at the site level anymore.
Eric Janssen
Got it. Did you have to change your sales strategy you don't like reselling to different people are only after different budgets.
Mallorie Brodie
So we really encourage the sales team to kind of think about what are all the things that didn't work on the first product and be open to the fact that maybe they will work on the second product, just so we weren't taking certain behaviors and, and assuming that the same would be true on this new product, but it ended up actually being incredibly similar. So we're often talking to a VP of operations at a construction company regardless, so the persona was more or less the same. The user was different, but that's okay. Because we're selling still to almost the same person, and the same sales reps could sell both products. So there wasn't actually any major structural changes we had to make internally, is basically our team just moving over their focus to the new product.
Eric Janssen
That's cool. So reflecting back now, so your how many years in almost seven,
Lauren Lake
December 17 is our seventh
Eric Janssen
Happy upcoming anniversary. There's something that we never let our kids off the hook with saying like whether their day was good or bad, we always ask them best parts and worst parts. So what have been the best parts of the journey so far, and would have been the call them worst parts or parts that you maybe don't want to repeat? Again, best parts, worst parts,
Mallorie Brodie
A couple best parts. So I think like our business partnership has been incredible. And I think that's something that's really difficult with a lot of businesses, if the partners aren't getting along, then everything suffers because of it. But we've always just been I think very aligned and what we were looking to accomplish with the business, and really good at working together, we both definitely are appreciative of the different skills that we bring to the table. So that's definitely been one of the best parts. And the other one, I would add to that, and I'm just going to leave the worst parts. The other Best part I would say is just I think we've become incredibly confident over time that no matter what challenge we come across of the business, we will be able to solve it. And we don't know what those things will be necessarily, but we know that we'll figure it out. And I think our team as a whole feels that because the team has been through challenges together. And I think that's something that's just going to be incredibly valuable going forward in our careers, whether it's starting another business at some point or getting a job at some point, I don't know. But yeah, I think that's something that we both really value.
Eric Janssen
So before Lauren has the pleasure of doing the worse. What are you to do to work on that relationship? I've had other founders at the same time on the podcast, and they do little things that they do to keep each other in check. So do you have any regular things that you do together?
Mallorie Brodie
I think early on we if there was anything that we felt like there was any tension over it was just because no one was accountable for that part of the business yet because there was literally new departments emerging as the company grew. And we're like, oh, wait, which one of us is doing marketing again? So I think just making sure that the division of accountabilities is very clear. Make sure that there's no confusion about who should be working on what part of the business. So that was one thing that we definitely did, yeah, and now, like, we try to have lunch together, whenever we're both in the same place. And I think that's just become kind of habitual, maybe for us. And it gives us an opportunity out of the office to just catch up on what's going on. And I think that just keeps like each other kind of in the loop. And that's kind of sometimes where our best ideas come from is just being able to brainstorm being able to just kind of chat and figure out what the next plan is. So I think we just yeah, we spend a lot of time together, we joke that we're telepathic, and we always kind of know what's, what's going on. And so I think just staying like open with that, and not kind of letting each other kind of get on a different page.
Eric Janssen
Cool. Lauren, worst parts,
Lauren Lake
Worst parts. Um, I mean, there, there are specific things like decisions that maybe we would go back and make differently. But I wouldn't say that those were necessarily the worst parts by any means. Because we were learning and usually the decision we made was the right decision at the time, we just didn't have all of the information. And so in hindsight, it's easy to say we would have done something differently. So I wouldn't say that there's any decision that was necessarily like the worst part, I would say for me, Mallory, I guess you can say if you agree, I think the hardest part is just how, like taxing it is energy wise to have your own business. And it never goes away. And and so I think in the beginning, at least I felt like, okay, we're just gonna work super hard for another six months, and then it'll get easier. And then I can kind of take a break, and it'll be fine. Or this won't last forever. So like, just push through now, and you'll kind of get to the other side, and it just doesn't really work that way. There's always a new stressor, there's a new problem. And so just being able to figure out how to deal with that as just an ongoing thing versus thinking that it's magically going to go away someday. And I think we've gotten better at that. I think you get also just used to having kind of that pressure on you at all times. But definitely being able to take a step back when we can and kind of try to forget about some of that stuff temporarily is definitely important, because otherwise it doesn't like it really does take a toll.
Eric Janssen
Finally, on these podcasts, and I don't know business books and blogs, you talk a lot about the company, but a lot of but the people like how are you versus how is the company or if you ask how how are things going? The default answer is always what the company is going well, like they'll hold on what about you? So what do you do to keep saying, like, do you have your own? I don't know, meditation, exercise, travel, whatever. What are the things that you do too? Keep you good.
Lauren Lake
Yeah, I think we both kind of do different things, I have a family now. So that's different. I think, before I definitely used to exercise is kind of a way to like, clear my head. And now like, I should still be doing that, but it's harder, I have a two year old. So just the time is sometimes harder to find. But I think just being able to kind of like, be at the office for me and put my effort in then and kind of switch off in the evenings is kind of how I get a bit of a break. And then also just trying to focus on kind of the other aspects in life, take time off, spend weekends with family or friends and not always worrying about the next thing in the business, and not feeling guilty about that. I think we've realized that it really is a marathon, so you have to pace yourself or you're not going to, like injure it. So yeah, it's I think it's changed over time. But I think for me, just like feeling like the business is moving forward and feeling like I'm adding value to it. I don't mind putting in the effort. I think the times where it's more de energizing is when you feel like there's challenges that are much deeper and harder to solve. And so you feel like you're spinning your wheels. And that's when definitely for me, I feel more of that like burnt out feeling versus just being tired from having put in a good effort, which is a more productive, feeling better,
Eric Janssen
Mallorie what do you do,
Mallorie Brodie
I would say just not traveling for a few weeks is definitely a really helpful way to just unwind a little bit. So when you're kind of going from place to place to place and that's exciting. There's really interesting meetings happening, but you're like literally living out of a suitcase. And then you get into this habit where there's like six bags you haven't unpacked. And then all of a sudden you're like, Okay, time for laundry. So as soon as I can just have a stretch at home to sort of get things reorganized. Again, that's always really nice. I probably used to not exercise as much. And I've gotten more into exercising recently, and definitely, like crave it when I haven't had a chance to do it. But I'm like, every time I travel now I like try and go to the hotel gym. And those are just new habits that I think over time I've developed as a way to just make sure that we're both staying healthy and everything. And the last thing I would add is I think by having a good partnership, it means that if Lauren goes on vacation, she's able to count on me and just completely disconnect for that vacation, at least I hope she feels that way. And the same goes for me that if I'm going away for a week somewhere, then I know that Lauren has everything covered, and can truly take that time to just unwind as well. So that's been good.
Lauren Lake
And I can't imagine, like running a business on my own. Because I think like having our partnership has been such a big part of what we've done. And we really count on each other to, like, keep moving forward, even in those really like dark times. And so yeah, we count on each other to kind of like lift each other up, if one person is having a bad day, or there's been a decision that's, you know, didn't go the way we wanted it to, or whatever it is. And so I think we're able to keep each other kind of like looking forward even when it feels like everything's falling apart.
Eric Janssen
That's great. Is there anything you wish you would have known earlier? Or say advice to your 20 something year old selves? If you were just coming out of school and starting this company? What would be the advice that you'd give yourselves?
Mallorie Brodie
I think one sort of realization was that I think we were very hesitant and a lot of ways to ask for help early on, because we're like, oh, we don't want to bother people are no, we don't take up their time. And then over time, we realized that people like really want you to be successful, and they really want us to be successful. And if they have the means to help you and you're respectful of their time, then they're all in. And so I think if you can build those relationships over time, then just realizing that people around you actually really want you to do well. And just leveraging that when possible, as opposed to thinking that you're always a burden to sort of advisors or whoever it is that's helping you. So that's definitely something that we've realized, and we definitely have a lot of great cheerleaders and that definitely keeps us going to.
Eric Janssen
So the community, the Ivey, entrepreneur, community, and the podcast is getting quite a good number of listeners now. So is there anything that the community can do for you, anything that you're working on that you need help with on the I don't know, hiring friend, fundraising, how can we help?
Mallorie Brodie
Go out and start your own businesses and that's definitely something we would love to see we've been big promoters of women in business as well. So if there's anything we can do to help there but that would be the thing that I think would make us the happiest or apply Bridgette for a sales job
Eric Janssen
Start your own but if not come work at Bridgette. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you making the time it's been really good to hear a little more the details of the early days story and congrats on the launch of the new product. It seems to be going really well and appreciate you taking the time.
Lauren Lake
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having us.
Introduction/Outro
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