Brisbane startup secures $1 million (£0.81 million) from Microequities Venture Capital Fund following bootstrapping

Startup

A Brisbane startup developing a Canva-style solution for enterprise companies has secured $1 million (£0.81 million) from Sydney-based Microequities Venture Capital Fund after a strong run in bootstrapping.

Outfit, developed by NetEngine founder Bruce Stronge, hit $750,000 (£610,275) in turnover in its first year after launching in 2014, and the team is aiming to generate $10 million (£8.14 million) in turnover by 2020.

“We wanted to bootstrap until we knew what the formula was,” Stronge tells StartupSmart.

As soon as the team figured this out, had enough enterprise customers and an understanding of what Outfit needs in order to scale, Stronge says he decided to bring in external investment to help amp up the team and break into the US.

“We’re clear now that we’re not a design tool,” he says.

“We’re all about brand governance [and] we’ve got very clear that we’re a brand platform.”

Unlike Canva, which enables individual users to create elegant designs, Stronge says Outfit’s focus is on allowing brand departments in big companies to produce and share branded marketing materials across the whole organisation.

The $1 million (£0.81 million) investment will be used to accelerate Outfit’s growth and expansion into the US, says Stronge.

“We’ll be hiring more sales people and more account managers, more marketing people [and] following on from that more developers,” he says.

“Most important for us is getting more sales done.”

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