Tradebot pumps $500K into Soleran
Kansas City Business Journal - by Suzanna Stagemeyer Staff Writer
Media
It took about eight weeks from the first formal meeting with Soleran LLC leaders for Tradebot Ventures Inc. to close a deal to invest half a million dollars in the early-stage company.
“Building a business is about creating momentum,” said Dave Cummings, a serial entrepreneur and chairman of Kansas City-based Tradebot Ventures. “You need to make decisions so that the business can move forward.”
Moving forward is something Lenexa-based Soleran, which sells a hosted customer-relationship management tool, is intent on doing. The company, which has a core team of three, plans to tap the June 26 investment to hire about nine people this year and accelerate its sales push.
“We could sustain at the current level pretty much indefinitely and continue to grow slowly,” Soleran CEO Grady Hawley said. “But that’s not what we know the product can do. So we went around and more or less tried to find the right partner who could do some things like Dave is going to do besides just money.”
Soleran — founded in 2005 — officially launched its flagship product in midsummer last year and has added hundreds of users. The value player in an industry dominated by names such as Salesforce.com, Soleran targets small and midsize businesses. Its hosted product, eSalesTrack, offers easy setup and tools such as integrated scheduling, e-mail, e-mail marketing and prospect management features. The monthly fee is $40 a user, compared with competing products whose monthly fees range from $65 to $225 a user, a message that resonates in the current economy, Hawley said.
Through the investment, which gave Tradebot Ventures a minority stake, Soleran leaders get input from Cummings — founder of Tradebot Systems Inc. and BATS Trading Inc., a national stock exchange — and access to Tradebot Systems for general advice about human resources, accounting and other functions.
The investment was unique in the speed with which it closed, said Greg Kratofil Jr., a lawyer at Polsinelli Shughart PC who made sure the legal paperwork wrapped up within the tight time frame.
Often, he said, entrepreneurs spend lengthy periods raising money before an investor makes a decision.
“There’s probably no more entrepreneur-friendly investor than Tradebot,” Kratofil said. “Dave’s got an idea he wants to be on the same page as the entrepreneur. It’s really refreshing.”
Hawley said the economic environment makes it tough for young companies to land investments.
“There’s just a lot of fear in the market right now,” he said. “No one really knows what’s going to happen. So even if they have funds, there’s really little investing (in early-stage companies), which is one reason we’re so grateful for Dave and his crew.”
Soleran exhibited the exact characteristics Tradebot Ventures was looking for, Cummings said — a local, tech-based company with management talent and the potential to scale up quickly.
“We wanted to create a template for a fundable company here and make it quick and easy if you fit that,” he said.
Tradebot Ventures could invest more in Soleran down the road, he said, depending on what the company makes of this first cash infusion.
Chris Geisert, managing director of Tradebot Ventures, said he hopes to continue the quick pace of the Soleran deal.
Cummings founded the venture firm late last year to set up a professional system for investing in local early-stage tech and financial services companies. The firm is backed by money from Tradebot Systems and makes investments of $50,000 to $5 million.
“I think we’re kind of opening up a new era of tech investing in Kansas City that’s going to be spurred on by Tradebot,” Kratofil said.
sstagemeyer@bizjournals.com | 816-777-2203
