"Heads Over Heels connections have helped us acquire new customers."
Tessa Court is the CEO of Intelligencebank, a business process management platform that helps people put tailored processes around their digital information. Tessa presented at the Heads Over Heels October 2015 Portfolio Event.
What's your company's point of difference?
From a single platform, we offer a range of SaaS Apps: Digital Asset Management Software, Board Portal Software, Risk and Compliance Software and Knowledge Management Software.
At the end of the day, our point of difference is that we help teams across business functions create efficiencies and reduce their operational risk by putting processes around their files and data.
​
How did Heads Over Heels provide practical support?
Head Over Heels was great at providing connections for sales. When you are in hyper-growth mode, it’s all about driving revenue, and Heads Over Heels connections have helped us acquire new customers.
​
What is the single biggest thing that helped you grow?
Finding product-market fit is one of the most important things a startup can do. Once we productised our platform into niche SaaS ‘apps’, we reduced our sales cycle overnight from 10 months to three months, and were able to start selling globally. Currently, IntelligenceBank has 200,000 paid user seats across 55 countries. Last month, we just put on some new customers in Israel and Finland both of which have been really gratifying as we are reaching literally every corner of the globe.
​
Who or what were your 'connections for growth'?
We are always looking to meet with Heads of Marketing, Company Directors and Risk and Compliance Managers who could benefit from our software.
​
What one thing would you do differently?
I would have figured out ‘product-market-fit’ faster – it took us three years. But no one could tell us this – we had to figure it out for ourselves.
​
What advice would you offer the women following you?
The start-up journey is exciting because you get to put things into the world that has never existed before. My number one piece of advice is to other founders, male or female is to know your business cycle – sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down, but if you keep persisting you will drive your business forward and always get to the next milestone.