Since its start seven years ago, Wrike has been entirely bootstrapped. It has built a project management SaaS company that has helped it win clients such as headset maker Beats and Ecco, a well known-sandal company. Today, the company has taken a new direction in its effort to scale its business. Wrike has announced it has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures.
Wrike CEO and Founder Andrew Filev said in an email interview that the company did not needs the outside investment in its initial development. Without funding, the company learned how to prioritize and stay lean. Over the course of its seven years, the company grew to about 4,000 customers. To scale, the company will need to become accessible to millions of people. And that means creating a platform that developers can plug into for building apps that people can use from any number of different services:
We already have good APIs and a host of integrations, some built by us, and some built by our partners and customers. Now we want to take it to next level, so that anywhere you do your work online, the tool has a connector to Wrike.
Another area is mobile. We already have a leading mobile app, compared to our key competitors, but there’s so much more we want to do there. Then there’s the core product, there’s enterprise, there are interesting customer requests… and we’re in the very early phase for our market. Wrike should be used by 5 million businesses in 5 years, and there’s a lot of work to get there.
Wrike competes in a space with well-funded competitors like Asana but also established players like Atlassian, which is building out its service for company wide use. To its advantage, Wrike was early to the market, helping it establish itself as a leading provider in the space.
But to build a platform is no easy task. It takes years to develop. But everyone has their own projects these days Their own DIY gigs. We’ll just have to see if we also need Wrike’s kind of tools to get the work done.
