Local start-up Jobber raises US$100M in growth financing

Jobber, whose logo is seen in this photo, launched in Edmonton, Alta., in 2011, as a SaaS (software as a service) company that helps small business owners in the home services industry manage their workload, staff and clientele.

An Edmonton-born software company has raised US$100 million in growth financing.

Jobber sells software to home services entrepreneurs – plumbers, electricians, residential cleaners, landscapers and the like. The Jobber app helps people running a small business manage their schedule, job and quote requests, and invoices.

The US$100 million capital announced on Tuesday is the largest amount raised in Alberta's capital city ever, according to Jobber CEO and co-founder Sam Pillar.

"It's something we're really proud to be able to do in this community that supported us for so long," Pillar told CTV News Edmonton on Thursday.

"We launched in 2011 and at a time when, I think, the start-up ecosystem in Edmonton was pretty early on but there was just a lot of really great support."

Pillar moved to Edmonton in 2001 to attend the University of Alberta.

By the end of the decade, he and partner Forrest Zeisler had started Jobber. Just over a decade after launching, the company employs about 600 people across Canada, U.S. and Latin America.

An estimated 200,000 people use Jobber every day, Pillar said. In 2022, the small businesses using Jobber delivered $13 billion worth of services to 27 million Canadian and American households.

Jobber CEO and co-founder Sam Pillar speaks to CTV News Edmonton via Zoom on Feb. 9, 2023, shortly after the company announced US$100 million in a Series D round of fundraising.

Of Edmonton's influence on the company, Pillar added, "The built world around us – our homes, our offices, everywhere we spend time – is built and maintained and kept safe and functioning well by the people in these industries. So, yes it's true that Edmonton has a little bit more of a blue collar lean to it, but these businesses are absolutely everywhere and critical to every city."

The CEO acknowledged the company has had an "amazing run" during an economically difficult period for so many others.

He partially credited Jobber's growth to tapping into an unserviced market

"It's very early days for the industry in terms of its adoption of technology. Most of these companies are sort of moving off of pen and paper and coil-bound notebooks, stuffed with Post-it notes and maybe a calendar on the wall, and they're adopting technology for the first time," Pillar commented.

The latest cash input will be used on research, development and customer acquisition.

"There are so many small companies, more small business entrepreneurs out there that we can help and so we're on a mission and now armed with a very large balance sheet to charge forward, continuing to find ways to spread the word and make sure these small businesses know there's a better way to run their companies, and it's called Jobber," Pillar said.

Growth Equity Investor General Atlantic led the Series D round fundraising, alongside Jobber's existing investors Summit Partners, Version One Ventures and Tech Pioneers Fund.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Evan Kenny