It’s not every day a kangaroo makes an appearance in the capital.
But then again, The Better Software Company’s Steve Cody is not your average CEO.
“This is going to help our customers jump out over the competition,” he said, referring to his company’s new product, called Pete 2.0. “How do we kind of get that message across? I said, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get a kangaroo.’”
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Zaahra Mehsen was three years into a biology degree at a local university when she realized she wanted to take a different path. “I realized that it’s not my thing,”
So sure enough, there were not one, but two kangaroos at the company’s headquarters earlier this week for the product launch.
“I got my hands on an eight-foot kangaroo, but then (the Toronto Zoo) called back and said, ‘He’s not very social. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea.’ ”
As it turns out, the five-foot kangaroo was also “a little bit questionable,” Mr. Cody said, so a smaller one tagged along for the photo opportunities at the event.
While the new product is meant to help his customers, Mr. Cody said it will do big things for his company at the same time.
“We truly believe if you look at all small business software out there, nobody has done anything like it at all. We think it revolutionizes small business software,” he said.
“We can do text left to right, right to left. We can do Arabic, we can do multi-currency, we can do localization, we can do page translation, it’s user-based, very, very configurable, which is an important part.”
The product launch was just one part of a very busy week for Mr. Cody and his company, but that’s fine with the Ottawa man who entered the L-Spark accelerator’s first cohort with the tech product he had designed to help him run his many other businesses in the capital.
“We’re looking to be a billion-dollar company in five years, right? So you gotta move fast,” he said.
Mr. Cody was one of the participants in the pitchfest at last week’s TiECon Canada conference. While he didn’t come away the winner, he said appearing at the event is going to reap financial benefits down the line.
“We had a VC that was there that pulled us aside and wants to lead our A round, wants to commit $5 million of our $10-million A round, so that’s very positive,” he said, adding that another venture capitalist approached him at the event, one of as many as six who want to get in on the round, which is expected in the spring.
This is on top of an announcement expected soon on a seed round that closed earlier this week, Mr. Cody said. He also attended a reception Thursday night where the Capital Angel Network announced its recent investments in six local startups, including his.
He said the company’s revenues are growing 35 per cent month-over-month and it is actually ahead of schedule in its quest to be a billion-dollar company in five years.
“It’s crazy. It’s been the ride of my life. We’re also having a great time,” said Mr. Cody, who readily concedes he is not a “tech guy.”
And while the product might be not even close to what he offered at Cody Party Supply, one of his former companies that still bears his name, he said there are similarities between the two.
“To me, it just always seems to come back to business basics. It’s all about relationships, right? We build relationships with our customers,” he said.
