SquadGurus

The Problem

Finding and engaging IT services firms is hard, but never more necessary than today. 

The reason firms are needed is that the talent you need to deliver on your innovation goals is scarce and in-demand. That dynamic stops companies from achieving their potential.  

IT Service provider firms are a great option, but there are 100’s of thousands of them. How do you find the right firm to services your needs today when engaging new firms is expensive, time-consuming, and risky? 

The result of this is wasted time, money and opportunity.

Our Solution

SquadGurus is where any client can discover and transact with any services firm in our network for consulting, integration, application development, cloud migration and many other offerings. SquadGurus is a platform and marketplace that aggregates clients and high-quality providers and makes finding talent and buying IT services easy, fast and efficient.

The completeness of our vision is what sets SquadGurus apart– few of our competitors are more than service provider directories selling leads. We are automating the complete services lifecycle from customer acquisition through cash collection- opportunity posting, proposal matching/discovery, collaboration, contracting, billing, payments and more. We support the platform with a high-value customer success management approach.

Customer Feedback

Don't believe us? Listen to our customers! Here are some quotes from our early clients: 

• "SquadGurus got us proposals within a couple of weeks from several highly-qualified firms and helped us evaluate and shortlist the best ones. Without SquadGurus we would have taken many months to get to this far and we may not have found such a strong partner." - SaaS company that used SquadGurus for a fully-managed team

• "We needed a project delivered quickly and with high quality for one of our client engagements. SquadGurus got several proposals within days and the one they helped us select was delivered quickly and under budget. We are working on the next phase with the client and will absolutely use SquadGurus again!" - Cloud services firm that used SquadGurus to find a project delivery partner for an application refactoring
  

• "SquadGurus’ network of providers helped us quickly deliver high quality new product features to the market..." - Security SaaS company used SquadGurus to augment their R&D teams

Our Mission

We're striving to remove the friction, cost, risk and inefficiency in the vast global market for IT services, while giving smaller and mid-sized firms the ability to compete and win business against entrenched competitors. 

We believe that there is a massive opportunity to help firms grow faster while improving the experience for both buyers and sellers of IT services.

Traction So Far

In April 2022 we generated $148k of Gross Services and $20k of Net Revenue, an increase of 460% and 708% respectively over April 2021 - and a high % of our business is long-term contracts (which starts to feel like SaaS/MRR business). 

We have 80+ service provider partners (up from 20 in December) with a combined “capacity” of over 20,000 engineers across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas

The Team

We are a team that deeply understands this market and how to deliver value for our clients and partners.

• John (co-founder & CEO) has 30+ years in software & technology services leadership and has run a 500-person outsourcer based in Ukraine and Poland. He was named “key executive” in the acquisition of Cloud Technology Partners by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2017. John also created and built a business unit in CTP that generated 50% of the revenue and 70% of the gross margin leading up to the exit.
• Lisa (co-founder and COO), was a key executive at what is now AMAG Pharmaceuticals which went public in 2006 and was acquired in 2020 for $650m.
• Romain (VP of customer success and delivery) has over a decade of building outsourcing solutions and relationships in Europe.

The Market

IT services is $1.2T and the segment we are targeting– engineering & cloud for US and European clients– is nearly $300B and growing 4-5% annually. There are over 500,000 IT services firms globally and as many potential buyers from small tech startups to global enterprises.

Moving Forward

In 2022, we're working to:

• Hit $2.5m in GSV and $400k in Net Revenue
• Reach 100 new clients with opportunities exceeding $25m in Gross Services ($2.5-3m in net revenues
• Bring on a CTO and GTM leaders
• Raise a full seed round of $2.5m+
• Establish KPI baselines for lifetime / contract value per client, customer acquisition costs, customer churn, opportunity fill metrics (% filled, time to fill, etc.), and more

The primary use of funds will be for sales/marketing and R&D investments to achieve the milestones above.

SquadGurus & Ukraine

Ukraine is the #2 IT services market in Europe (Poland is #1). Our network of service provider partners is global, and that includes firms in Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities in Ukraine where we have many friends and personal relationships. 

While the war has disrupted some operations, all of our partners are now in Western Ukraine and continuing to deliver high-quality solutions for their clients. 

We support the people and technology industry of Ukraine and will continue to seek out opportunities for them to grow and succeed on our network. 

Why Invest

The heart of our community is our service providers from around the globe. They will be a key part of this fundraising effort. In addition, we have our professional and personal networks that want to see us succeed but often may find a traditional angel investment level too steep or complicated for them. This allows our supporters to share in our success.

People should invest because of the strength we have across the four Ts.

Team - deep experience and significant track records of success

Traction - fast growing in a massive $300B market

Technology - platform that automates the IT services buying journey

Timing - the tech labor market has never been tighter