Vancouver startup Olive has raised a $1 million seed round led by San Antonio’s Active Capital with participation from Techstars and UK-based Novator.
The Techstars Seattle alumni has created a vendor selection platform that helps companies streamline IT procurement.
Olive transforms the buying process by moving customers away from the archaic RFP/RFI processes to a fully agile evaluation. This leads to a much faster, far more effective decision while also increasing collaboration across stakeholders, providing assurance that 100% of solutions are evaluated, and assuring a robust and objective selection process.
“We see a huge opportunity for companies to save big and move faster just by improving their buying process,” Christopher Heard, CEO of Olive, wrote regarding the news. “In today’s environment, every industry, even the traditionally more laggard ones are forced to fast forward their digital transformation. They don’t have time to evaluate solutions for months and still risk falling further behind by getting it wrong.”
Olive also provides tools for software vendors to demonstrate their benefits to buyers and gain valuable insights into the needs of their prospects. By streamlining the experience for buyers, Olive is able to shorten sales cycles for vendors as well as foster stronger, longer lasting partnerships.
Taking the best practices of the world’s leading technology decision makers and consultants, the company plans to become the real world olive branch between buyers and sellers.
“Today, buying enterprise software is full of bias & misaligned Incentives. Olive is unique in their approach & commitment to making the process more collaborative and free of bias,” lead investor Pat Matthews, Active Capital.
Olive was co-founded by Chris Heard and Dan Harrison in 2018.
Photo: Provided by Olive.