The idea of founding a company with a sibling would give most people pause as they question whether business and family could mix in a way that would deliver success.
Sisters Kristine Steuart and Katherine Berry appear to be striking that balance after announcing June 5 their Vancouver-based startup Allocadia Software Inc. has raised an additional $7 million in venture capital funding.
“It’s definitely exciting,” said CEO Steuart, who launched the company four years ago with chief product officer — and identical twin — Berry.
“As an entrepreneur, I think you always look to the next phase and the next step, and as a company we’re absolutely already thinking about, ‘How do you we put this to work?’”
The CEO said Allocadia plans to double in size within the next year and much of the funding is going toward sales, marketing and product development.
The company employs about 30 people at its office near Burrard Street along the Broadway Corridor.
Steuart was previously a marketer at Crystal Decisions, where she was tasked with managing multimillion-dollar marketing budgets using spreadsheets passed across different departments.
“It was really difficult to understand how much we were spending,” she said.
“And then never mind understanding the return on that spend.”
She and Berry eventually teamed up to develop Allocadia’s cloud-based software, which aggregates data to help users manage marketing spending and measure their return. Keeping it in the cloud makes it accessible at all times to customers who are not content with passing spreadsheets around different departments.
“(Berry) was more of the technical twin…she was able to start building a product and I started selling a product. Right from the get-go we had complimentary skill sets,” Steuart said.
“It’s the differences that make this partnership work.”
Allocadia has more than 100 clients and the CEO said the company is determined to grow the customer base further after securing the $7 million in the Series A financing round.
Alto Ventures, iNovia Capital, Illuminate Ventures and Beehive Holdings led the round.
Meanwhile, Altos Ventures partner Anthony Lee and iNovia partner Kevin Swan are joining the board at Allocadia.
“As an early investor, I have witnessed first hand Allocadia’s growth, from a bootstrapped company to an established leader in marketing performance management,” Swan said in a statement.
“The marketing technology landscape has changed, and the talk today is not just about managing leads, and is instead focused on driving revenue. Allocadia is at the forefront of this evolution with transformational technology that speaks to (chief marketing officers).”
