Tell me about your company. When were you founded? What do you do? Where are you located?

At Klue, we are the system of record for competitive enablement. Competitive enablement is the combination of competitive intelligence, market intelligence, and buyer intelligence. We combine that collection and curation of intel with the practice of sales enablement, and we put that all in one platform so that information lives in one place, that everyone in your company can access. That enables our clients to share, collect, and curate intel that will give them a competitive advantage.

We were founded in Vancouver in 2015 by co-founder and CEO, Jason Smith and co-founder and CTO Sarathy Naicker. Our head office is in Vancouver, but we also have offices in Toronto, the Netherlands, and the UK. We also have a distributed workforce with team members in Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver Island, which is awesome. In total, Klue has around 250 employees and counting, which we are also proud of.

What is the big problem your company is tackling?

Everyone has competitors. It’s always a little bit of an eyeroll when we meet a company that says, “We don’t have competitors, we don’t focus on the competition.” That may sound nice. It sounds like you’re focusing on what you’redoing, and not worry too much about external forces, but the reality is that everyone has competitors, and the competition is only getting greater. What we’ve observed is that the most successful companies are the ones that stay on top of the competition, and they do so at every level of the company. Helping companies leverage their competitive research and keep it current is one of the problems Klue tackles.

The margin between winning and losing, especially in B2B tech, is razor thin. The B2B space is fiercely competitive. What Klue does is we connect the dots between departments. We take internally available intel such as your emails and your Slack, and we make that easy to share and upload to the Klue platform. We also take publicly available intel across the web, and we bring that into one place where you can use that intel to enable your organization to compete better and win more deals. We’re seeing that our clients’ win-rates are higher and closing the competitive revenue gap.

What are you most proud of, in terms of company milestones?

I’ve been with the company for a year and a half and in my time here I’ve seen Klue pass the 200-employee mark. That was certainly a milestone that we celebrated. Then, our series B funding from Tiger Global and Salesforce Ventures – that was a big raise for us, and a really exciting time around the office. Also, we recently announced the acquisition of Double Check Research, a win/loss analysis provider which will help Klue offer even more accurate buyer intelligence intel.

Internally, we’re very proud of the awards that we’ve received and the recognition that we continue to get for our work. We’ve been on the Deloitte Fast 50 Canada two years in a row, and The Fast 500 North America this year as well. We won a couple of TIAs (Technology Impact Awards), and a couple culture awards which are really special to us because of how much we care about our company culture. LinkedIn named Klue one of Canada’s top 15 startups. Globe & Mail named us one of the top growing companies in 2021, 2022 and 2023. There’s plenty to be proud of.

How would you describe your company culture?

I would describe it as understated but palpable. You can feel it. It’s gritty and hard working, but it’s friendly. It’s hard to define, but everyone gets it, everyone understands it. We all feel the culture. One thing I love about Klue is, we don’thave cheesy slogans plastered all over the walls. We just encourage our team to be their best selves. That comes from the top down. We all realize that slogans aren’t what strengthens company culture. It’s the actions people take, and that really does start from the leadership on down.

In my time so far with Klue, I’ve been so impressed with Sarathy and Jason, because they really practice what they preach. Every leader in the company is transparent and hard working. It’s very clear that the expectation is that we’reall builders at Klue. We’re building something together, and we’re working hard, but we always have time for a laugh. There’s a real humility to the culture that is something that that I love, frankly. They’ve really struck the balance between encouragement and drive, while also being incredibly supportive. It really is something that everyone believes in. It’s understated, but it’s understood.

What are the three words you would use to describe your company Culture?

Open. Humble. Challenging.

Challenging in the sense of challenging each other to push further and grow. We push each other to work hard, to be accountable, and to show up for each other. We push each other that way, and

we get a lot of growth out of it. At the same time, we’re open about facing our challenges, and we can be humble with each other and say, “I’m struggling here. I need help” when we need support. and it’s always well received.

What is it like to work for your company? Why is it a great place to work?

I really feel like I’m entrusted and given the space to do my best work without someone looking over my shoulder and constantly asking me to justify what I’m doing. At every meeting and throughout the day, we’re encouraged to share ideas and encouraged to look at things differently. I can’t remember ever being on a team before where there’s not an ounce of doubt that someone isn’t pulling their weight – it’s obvious that we’re all working hard, and that really does create a sense of trust in each other. If we fall down, we’ve got a whole team who will be very quick to gather around and pick each other up, and that comes down to the fact that we all trust each other. We’re a high performing team because of it. Klue is the most high-performing team I’ve ever been a part of. It’s a great place to work for the culture, but working with smart, capable people is a real blessing.

In their own words, what do your employees say?

 Are you hiring?

Oh yeah! The best way to see our currently open positions is to go to Klue.com/careers. We are currently hiring for account executives on the sales team, various engineering positions, and we have a couple of internship roles available as well, just to name a few. This is for not only our Vancouver office, but our other offices around the world as well. I strongly encourage anyone interested to apply – we want to hear from you. It really is a great place to work, and we’re only going up.