Beaverton software maker RFPIO made its first acquisition, scooping up Kansas-based RFP360.
The move brings 46 employees to RFPIO and a greatly expands the company’s capability and user base. The RFP market has two sides: those issuing RFPs and the vendors that answer them. RFPIO has mainly served the vendors selling their products by making it easier to respond to RFPs, said RFPIO co-founder and CEO Ganesh Shankar.
RFP360, which was founded four years before RFPIO, has built its business primarily serving the issuing side of the market. Combining these two products means that customers can not only respond to but now also issue RFPs in one platform.
The combination of existing brand equity and the expertise within RFP360 made the deal make sense.
“The expertise they bring to the table on the issuing side isn’t something you can build overnight,” said Shankar, who noted that as a company founded by product managers, the team weighed whether to buy or build the capabilities.
Like RFPIO, RFP360 has large enterprise customers. However, RFP360 also has a robust business in small and mid-sized companies. It’s in this SMB market that Shankar and his team see great potential.
RFPIO, which started selling its product in 2016, has been growing quickly. Last year, despite broader economic disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic the company doubled its booking from 2019. In a 2020 interview, Shankar said the company saw its product become mission critical for customers as they turned to the tool to help grow their own businesses.
RFPIO makes a software tool to help companies efficiently and effectively answer RFPs. This initial use has evolved the product into a response management software tool. Customers use the product to help employees collect answers to a variety of business inquiries such as internal product questions for sales teams or response to due diligence questions for fundraising or other deals.
“We couldn’t be more proud to be joining forces with a company like RFPIO that shares a commitment to driving the response management category forward,” said RFP360 co-founder Dave Hulsen in a written statement. “Together, we look forward to continuing to make a difference in driving the future of business-to-business procurement.”
The deal came about because of mutual connections between investors in both companies, said Shankar. Hulson is joining RFPIO's leadership team as director of solutions engineering.
RFPIO has about 300 employees. The company has raised a total of $27 million from investors, including $25 million from private equity firm K1 Investment Management. Terms of this deal were not disclosed. Shankar said RFPIO is financially stable, and he doesn’t expect to raise more money.
The company is hiring across its locations in Portland, India and now Leawood, Kansas. Shankar said staff will continue to work remote through the rest of this year.
