Nice Niche! November feat. Float

Here we are on November 2nd, which we all collectively know as International Project Management Day, so I can think of no better company to spotlight than one of Australia’s (nay, the world’s) very best: Float.com

I’ve got a lot of time for the team at Float. A hell of a lot of time. An extremely high-performing, remote-first, globally facing team that are sustainable, profitable and extremely good at what they do, as a tool to plan capacity and schedule project work.

Project Management might not be a niche in itself, nor SaaS.

But it’s the way they go about it, the uniqueness of the way they have scaled to serve their 4000+ customers in 150+ countries (as of Nov 2023) and the background of how the company came to be that pushes this into more of a unique, niche territory for me.

I’ve been fortunate to get to know the Co-Founder & CEO of Float, Glenn Rogers throughout the years - first when he was running SaaS Melbourne meetup for a while there, and eventually, via our interactions at Tractor Ventures , where Float are a part of our ‘Village’ - companies we help with their growth.

Now, Float have actually never needed Tractor funding, that’s important to highlight straight off the bat.

A 100% bootstrapped company that is co-led by Glenn and Lars Gelfan : their Co-Founder and CTO based in New York.

Glenn and Lars began Float out of their time in big ad agency actually, recognising the need to develop something more sophisticated than the basic spreadsheets everyone was using at the time to track the mountain of projects on their plate.

What began as a side project morphed quickly into its own sustainable company that served a need - a real material need - and sees them grow revenue and team culture in equal measure.

Here they are: https://www.float.com/

Float are representative of a lot of the inspiration of Tractor Ventures forming in the early days actually. Matt Allen , Jodie Imam and Aprill Enright , as the Co-Founders of Tractor, would see a large amount of companies that are growing with revenue, achieving global expansion methodically, and not necessarily needing VC investment to be able to achieve that.

Float, as a company that has been around for 10+ years, have been an independent company that scales with smart focussed scale initiatives, and in my mind, are one of the best technology companies I have ever come across personally.

The Tractor team feel exactly the same way, and we like spotlighting them whenever we can.

They’ve got a team based across 15+ countries, and I have come to admire the way they can do this a-sync, living their own ethos of a best work life which you can read more about in their blog, ‘Best Work Life,’ naturally: https://www.float.com/blog/

It’s a strong lesson in strong team culture, and they live and breathe it.

I also like that they do offsite in countries like Japan. That’s an offsite goal right there.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Glenn and Lars a while back on the Tractor Ventures ‘Hard Mode’ podcast, about the ways they grew the company, and you can listen to that here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yZIdOzM5JkaSaVGTQXxF7?si=bf2203c7d4f24eda

It was recorded a while ago by now, so the company sure has continued to evolve.

But the fact remains, as a company that has followed their own path, when the media noise might imply that it must be the VC highway or bust, is a factor in my continued invested interest in the Float journey that continues on a global reach trajectory.

Also, not too shabby getting a hold of float.com as a domain.

That’s just good business I would have thought!

You can read a bit more about the Float journey in the article that Bootstrappers.com c/o Andrew Gazdecki produced:

https://bootstrappers.com/does-a-startup-need-funding-to-be-successful-this-founder-says-no/

And I’ll be cheering them on today on this joyous International Project Management Day, as a shining example of what an excellent technology company looks like.

Companies that need that in their lives. All you need to do is contact them.

If it's good enough for a customer like NASA, it's good enough for you.

SaaS founders (based in Melbourne especially where Glenn is also), would be wise to keep them on your radar if not already.

Ping him on LinkedIn if you would like (didn't ask him, hope he's ok with that!)

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/rogersglenn/