Introhive Growing Fast in Saint John, Opening New Office And Tripling Size Of Its Team
SAINT JOHN– New Brunswick startup Introhive is experiencing faster than expected growth in its new Saint John operation, company executives say.
Last July, the Fredericton headquartered company announced that it was adding 12 new staff to its team, and establishing its first office in Saint John, where members of its engineering and program management teams would be based. The port city office started with about six staff in a rented spot in Connexionworks, a co-working space in the city centre.
Since then, Introhive’s Saint John team has grown from six to 18, and they have found a permanent home at 75 Prince William Street in the city’s uptown – a space that chief technology officer Jerry Carr says is almost full.
“We’re going to have to do some desk reconfiguration here to get more people in, which is great,” said Carr in a recent interview with Huddle. “It will hold another 12 people, and then we will have to start looking for adjacent space in the building.”
One of the big reasons for expanding to Saint John was access to talent. Tony Sheehan, Introhive vice-president of engineering, said they haven’t had any problem finding the right people.
“It’s been good. [The growth has been] more than I thought it would be at this time. We’re not even a year in and we’re at 18. I didn’t foresee it growing that fast,” said Sheehan. “But I did know Jerry and I were well connected in the community and we worked in Saint John for a while, so just tapping into our network that was the goal, to find talented people here. We knew they were here, so we’ve been successful.”
It’s not just the Saint John office that has been growing. Since 2018, Introhive has hired 30 people, bringing their team to 149. The company has outgrown its Fredericton office and will soon be moving to Argyle Place, a newly refurbished building in downtown Fredericton. The Halifax office is also moving into a bigger space this month.
“As soon we move in [Argyle Place], we will have that place over half-full as well,” said Carr. “There’s good room to grow, which is awesome.”
Introhive’s platform helps businesses automate routine tasks related to customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It combines data from a company’s calendars, emails, phone systems and other communications platform to automatically feed records such as meetings with clients, their contact information and so on to the CRM system the companies use. This allows businesses to free up some time for their salespeople to do other work.
Carr said the company’s growth over the last year has been mostly business demand. Last year, the company received $15.2-million (U.S.) in venture capital funding through a combination of equity financing from Lake Bridge and debt financing from an undisclosed investor in Toronto, but there hasn’t been any new funding since then.
“We haven’t been aggressively pursuing it. We’re focused on business growth. The growing demand from customers to the rate of sales and revenue growth. Of course, that gives us more capability to add people so we can accelerate fast,” said Carr.
“We have a never-ending list of features that our customers want us to build which is a really great problem to have. We’re trying to add more people to our team so we can satisfy our customers faster and grow our revenue faster.”
Some of those new team members will be in Saint John. Though they may soon run into a shortage in space, they don’t foresee a shortage of people.
“We’re seeing that our company is getting traction in the market. Customers are craving these new features. We got some exciting products coming out, so it’s all coming together,” said Sheehan. “I don’t see we’re hitting a wall in Saint John either for people. I think there is quite a bit more potential here.”