A local technology entrepreneur has acquired the majority stake in a California sales application company and is expanding its reach by opening an office and adding jobs in Highland Park.
Godard Abel, CEO of G2 Crowd, a business software evaluation company, is expected to announce Thursday that he has made a $5 million investment in SteelBrick, which makes a configure, price, quote (CPQ) application for users of Salesforce.com, the customer relationship management software giant. Abel also founded BigMachines, which has its headquarters in Deerfield and was acquired last year by Oracle for more than $400 million.
Abel becomes CEO of SteelBrick, which is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., and will open a SteelBrick office in Highland Park, next to G2 Crowd. He said he has hired about 10 people so far for SteelBrick and that the number will grow to 25 to 30 employees by year's end.
Max Rudman, the founder of SteelBrick, will become the company's chief technology officer; Matt Gorniak, a co-founder of G2 Crowd, bought a small portion of Abel's stake and will become a senior adviser to SteelBrick.
"Max has got a great product, and a great customer base," Abel said, "and I could really kind of bring the capital and the people. With the people and the resources, it will scale really well."
SteelBrick's hallmark product, its CPQ app, was formerly known as QuoteQuickly but will change to SteelBrick CPQ. Developed by Rudman in late 2009, SteelBrick CPQ can be purchased Amazon Sales the Salesforce AppExchange and helps streamline sales processes by simplifying product configuration and ensuring pricing and quoting accuracy.
It functions much like BigMachines does, Abel said, but does CPQ more quickly - four to 10 weeks as opposed to four to 10 months - and works specifically for Salesforce.com users.
Abel, who signed a two-year noncompete agreement after stepping down as CEO of BigMachines in July 2011, had become familiar with Rudman and SteelBrick at Salesforce.com events but began talking seriously about working together last fall.
"Money is really kind of half the problem," said Rudman, of growing SteelBrick. "You really have to know how to spend it well. So it was not just the money that was important but the personal experience. That's what really attracted me about Godard."
According to Rudman, SteelBrick went from fewer than five customers, which are mostly companies, and annual revenue of $10,000 in early 2010 to 110 customers and close to $2 million in annual revenue by the end of 2013. The company charges $45 per user per month for SteelBrick CPQ, as well as a one-time implementation fee that can range from $5,000 to $60,000.
SteelBrick, Rudman says, has about 120 companies and thousands of users; Abel says he'd like to add 100 more companies by the end of the year. In addition to the Palo Alto and Highland Park offices, Abel has hired sales representatives in London and the Washington, D.C., area.
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