Why We're Leading SmartSuite's Series A Financing

The age of the citizen developer is upon us.  

More so than any time in history, businesses today find themselves amid a renewed digital revolution, catalyzed by the rise of generative AI, hybrid work environments, and new stresses on both digital and physical supply chains. Demand for rapid innovation and breakneck speed development are at an all-time high in attempts to keep up with the seemingly boundless advancements of artificial intelligence. Yet, the supply of highly-skilled and specialized development resources is tighter than ever before. The pain of the global shortage of software developers is felt acutely across industries, but in particular among banks.  

Against this backdrop, low-code/no-code (LCNC) tools have become a much sought-after panacea. These easy-to-use platforms, which often leverage drag-and-drop interfaces and customizable workflows, allow non-technical users to leverage visual models of development and pre-made templates, helping improve speed and agility in business workflows, and lowering IT and development costs. Day-to-day business users have become citizen developers, armed with LCNC software solutions, capable of integrating AI capabilities to create powerful synergies that are transforming software development and business operations.  

Enter SmartSuite.

SmartSuite is a new operating system for businesses

SmartSuite is a cloud-based enterprise work management platform that enables companies to manage a wide range of business workflows in a single, unified platform. Its no-code interface enables teams to plan, track, and manage business processes, specific projects, and routine everyday tasks.  

Customers describe the powerful platform as a “Swiss army knife” applicable across multiple departments and business functions – from marketing and legal to CRM management and workflow automation.  

While SmartSuite is similar to scaled incumbents like Airtable, ClickUp, and Monday, it has several valuable and distinguishing capabilities. Unlike these other solutions, Smartsuite is unique in that it combines project management, business process automation, relational database, and document management solutions into a single platform. As organizations face an accelerating volume of both internal and external data – typically stored in silos but necessary for business operations across functional teams – SmartSuite’s provisioning of a unified system where (1) data is stored and (2) work happens can be transformational. By linking data across databases rather than simply synching data, SmartSuite breaks down the walls traditionally created by workflow management systems.  

SmartSuite’s differentiation – despite its relative newness to the market – is thanks to the significant R&D investment that management has made over the last three years. Out of the box, SmartSuite is an enterprise-grade platform that is now ready to scale and sell to large customers, including established financial institutions.

Founders who have been there, done that

In addition to the strength of the platform, a great deal of our excitement around SmartSuite is driven by its stellar founding team. Jon Darbyshire, Tara Darbyshire, and Peter Novosel previously built Archer GRC, which to this day, remains one of the most widely-adopted Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platforms in the financial industry.  

Husband-and-wife team Jon and Tara successfully bootstrapped the company until its sale to EMC in 2010, and during this time, successfully sold the Archer solution to 29 of the top 30 banks across the United States. Their experience in building and scaling a large enterprise, coupled with their humility, honesty, and humor represent the qualities that we at Canapi seek out in long-term business partners.  

A new era in Governance, Risk, and Compliance

While customers have deployed SmartSuite to solve a myriad of issues, an early leading use case comes in the form of Governance, Risk, and Compliance – this is especially true among financial institutions – including Capital One, Apple Bank, and Credit One - who have known the Darbyshires as GRC experts for decades.    

Today, banks use a wide range of disparate applications to manage customer data, financial transactions, and regulatory compliance. By automating business processes and reducing the need for manual intervention, SmartSuite helps improve regulatory compliance and reduce the risk of errors and non-compliance – this has already driven SmartSuite adoption among many banks.  

As community and regional banks continue to face challenges in attracting and retaining skilled technical talent, platforms like SmartSuite can enhance an institution’s ability to build and scale digital products. By combining the functionality of various other solutions and bringing them under a single roof, SmartSuite allows banks and other enterprises to consolidate tools. For example, while one mid-sized bank initially brought SmartSuite in under the cyber and information risk management team, there are now six additional teams across the bank using SmartSuite (IT, risk management, compliance, marketing, anti-financial crimes, and executive management office).  

We couldn’t be more excited for what comes next in our journey with SmartSuite and are honored to partner with the entire SmartSuite team and our fellow investors High Alpha and Sorenson Capital as we unlock this next chapter of growth.