Happy new year! It’s been an incredible 2019 at Bold.
We landed our first major investment, hired 141 new employees, and opened not one, but two, new offices. Most importantly, we served more merchants than ever!
We’re so excited for 2020 and can’t wait to keep growing, evolving, and finding new ways to help our merchants, partners, and team members succeed. Let’s count down some of our favourite highlights of the year:
10. Surpassed 90,000 merchants We sure have a lot to celebrate. Now let’s go back in time and remember some of the fun we started almost 365 days ago.
What a way to kick off the year! We landed a $22 million dollar investment from two Toronto venture-capital firms, Round13 Capital and Whitecap Venture Partners, helping to accelerate our already rapid growth. For CEO and co-founder, Yvan Boisjoli, it was about more than the money:
“We were talking to investors for three years. We were never in a rush to close anything,” he said. “It was never really a financial decision. It was about finding the right strategic partners. It took us a while to get here, but we found some great partners. It is pretty exciting.”
IOD days are a fixture of Bold’s culture of innovation. For 48 hours, employees break into teams and tackle new and exciting projects of their choice, pushing the boundaries of what is possible within a short timeframe. Some of our products like Kickbooster and Flocker were originally conceived by IOD teams. We can’t wait to see what new and exciting ideas our Bold builders think of next.
The harder we work, the harder we play! Office olympics happen twice a year and are always a great team building exercise and lots of fun. This was a particularly memorable winter olympics as things got extra competitive, raising the stakes for all involved. Only one of the two teams (blue and red) would reign victorious.
In Winnipeg, hockey isn’t a game — it’s a way of life! Everything from the way we enjoy our winters to the revitalization of our downtown revolves around the Winnipeg Jets.
Bold employees showed support for hometown pride, coming together in true whiteout fashion for an exciting playoff series against divisional rivals, the St. Louis Blues.
Everything we do at Bold is for our merchants.
That’s why we were thrilled to launch our Bold case studies series, where we took the time to share the success stories of some local merchants who use Bold apps.
We were blown away by the incredible journeys of these store owners, and humbled that our apps were able to help them on their entrepreneurial journeys. Check out some of our Bold Case Studies here.
We have long recognized an opportunity to better understand our merchants so that we can continue to provide industry-leading solutions. Entrepreneurs from four local merchant stores came to discuss how they use Bold’s products and sat with specialists to review their stores.
This event was a huge success, and a great opportunity for us to learn more about the people who we are building products for. We hope this meetup was the first of many, and that we can continue to strengthen our relationship with our merchants and partners.
Our secret to success in this rapidly growing industry is finding the best people — both in terms of talent and quality of character. Sometimes that means looking outside of our own borders. In June we travelled to Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, and Barcelona searching for senior developers to fill out our ranks in Winnipeg.
Being one of the fastest growing companies in Canada, things were getting a little bit crowded at our headquarters location. To free up space and provide opportunities for new teams, we opened a new office inside the University of Manitoba’s Smartpark Innovation Hub.
The new building boasts 17, 696 square feet of open concept workspace for roughly 140 Bold employees and tons of natural light.
Just like the Bold winter olympics, the summer edition rekindled the competitive spirit of Bold, pitting red (Smartpark) against blue (Fultz) in a battle royale for bragging rights. Events included an intense nerf-gun relay, a nail-biting knot-tying race, an exhausting bubble soccer match that went to overtime, and a pass the cup game that escalated into an all-out water fight. You know what they say, if you can’t beat ’em, soak ’em!
At Bold we are committed to giving back to the community (and having fun while we do it). Extra Life North was a 24-hour gaming marathon that raised money for the Children’s Hospital of Manitoba Foundation. Gamers stayed up all night, taking pledges and beating their fundraising targets and favourite games. 235 participants raised a total of $73,000 for kids in need.
Winnipeg Jet Nathan Beaulieu might be the king of the rink, but he couldn’t keep up with these kids at Mario Kart. He was one of several athlete guests, that also included olympians James Lavallée and Jill Officer.
To say Black Friday is a big deal at Bold would be an understatement. With Shopify sales generating over $2.9 Billion, up from $1.8 BIllion in 2018, it’s no small task to make sure our ecommerce merchants were well taken care of.
We set up our Black Friday war room at our Smartpark office, where team members worked around the clock providing world-class support for merchants. Everyone got into the BFCM spirit and stepped up to the challenge. As a result, we had our most successful Black Friday to date. Some highlights:
We launched this program to showcase the amazing things Bold merchants do everyday. Merchants who shared their story have a chance to receive the 2019 honoree package, which includes free Bold apps for a year, a free site review from our optimization experts, and dedicated onboarding support to get set up for success in 2020.
Photo via: austintexas.org
You might have heard the news by now — we’re expanding our business operations to Austin, TX! Our new office will be home to 40 employees who will seek to build on the momentum of Austin’s booming tech market. Bold CEO and co-founder, Yvan Boisjoli, thinks Austin is a great fit for Bold.
“The Austin tech market is now home to many tech giants including Google, Facebook, Oracle, and Apple,” Boisjoli said. “We are ready to embrace all that Austin has to offer as we fuel our growth and continue to attract great talent.”
Bold’s new CRO, Mike Sanchez
Austin software executive, Mike Sanchez, will lead the office and serve as the company’s first Chief Revenue Officer. Sanchez was most recently Vice President of partner and agency sales at WP Engine and previously held executive roles at BigCommerce and Rackspace.
We are super excited to have Mike on our team and know that he will play a key role in helping us achieve our goals for 2020 and beyond.
Interested in a dynamic career at one of Canada’s fastest growing companies? Learn more about our innovative culture and exciting career opportunities.
9. Grew our partner network beyond 2000
8. Achieved Level 1 PCI Compliance
7. Implemented 30+ tech integrations
6. Maintained 99.98% uptime
5. Had over 90% satisfaction on merchant support requests
4. Reached over 9,000 5-star reviews
3. Named Winnipeg’s fastest growing company, and one of Canada’s fastest 500 growing companies
2. Hired 141 new employees, surpassing the 350 mark
1. Opened a second office in Winnipeg, and expanded to the US with a new office in Austin, TX
$22 million dollar investment
Innovate or Die
Winter Olympics
Winnipeg Whiteout
Case Studies
Merchant Meetup
International Recruitment
New Winnipeg Office
Bold Summer Olympics
Extra Life North
Black Friday
Best of 2019: Bold Stories
Austin TX, here we come!
Check out our 2019 year in review video:
Written by Marshal Fries
Marshal Fries is a copywriter at Bold and fantasy football fanatic.
This article was originally published by our friends at Bold Commerce.
