Bob Willer doesn’t have to do much talking – his resume in Buffalo speaks for itself.
He was co-founder and CTO of Liquid Matrix through its acquisition in 2004. In 2007, he joined Campus Labs, the Buffalo higher ed software startup.
Willer led the Campus Labs technology team through its initial exit and several other acquisitions until it was scooped up last summer by Anthology, a transaction that made him CIO of a 1,500-person higher ed technology firm (Anthology announced this summer it had merged with Blackboard, creating an even larger organization with about 150 employees in Buffalo).
But Willer, a hockey enthusiast who coaches with the Buffalo Shamrocks organization, isn’t the type to settle into corporate operational roles. He’s a builder and earlier this year, it was time to pour another foundation. He joined startup Kangarootime in March as chief technology officer, after a few years of serving as a consultant for the company.
Kangarootime founder/CEO Scott Wayman moved to Buffalo in 2017 after winning an award in the 43North competition. The company closed on $3.4 million in Series A funding in 2019 and now has more than 40 employees from its Seneca One Tower headquarters.
Kangarootime offers a management platform for day cares and preschools, a potentially massive market where no clear software leader has yet emerged. Company executives believe they’ve found the right balance of tech, customer service and sales strategies to occupy that role.
“Kangarootime has the opportunity to be one of the biggest tech companies in Buffalo,” Willer said. “The market dynamics, our product-market fit, our leadership team, all the stars are aligning to make this a really, really great thing.”
Willer is leading a rebuild of the company’s core platform – the new version is dubbed “K2.” In the meantime, the company is pursuing an enterprise sales strategy in the U.S. and Canada that has quickly filled its pipeline. The job now is in building out tech and business functions to support the contracts Kangarootime is executing.
Once the company proves it can manage integrations into large companies with multiple sites, it will be off to the races, Willer said.
Willer has close contacts throughout Buffalo’s tech business community who have built strong legacies in their own right. Liquid Matrix co-founder Dave Marshall would go on to start Mongoose, now a fast-growing higher ed communications platform based in Orchard Park. He worked closely with Eric Reich, co-founder of Campus Labs, who left the company last summer and now holds a number of civic roles. Along the way, he’s hired and worked with countless local technologists as they move from one project to another.
In the meantime, Willer is getting a reminder of the peaks and valleys of growth-state startup. But just like one of his hockey teams, it’s a chance to take ownership of a project and watch it grow.
That’s what drives him.
“In startups there are high highs and low lows,” he said. “It’s a roller coaster. But every day it’s something new and something exciting.”
