Stitching a Solution for Product- Oriented Small/Medium Businesses

Today we’re excited to announce our investment in Stitch Labs. Stitch is an integrated business and order management suite for product-based businesses. At Costanoa our investment thesis is to work with great entrepreneurs who are building real technology to solve hard problems, and Stitch Labs has it all. We are thrilled to partner with the team!

Founder Brandon Levey has been described as “one of the most thoughtful, open-minded and intellectually curious founders,” and we couldn’t agree more. The whole team combines technical talent with personal experience in product-oriented companies, and “Stitch” is the perfect name to describe what they do: knit together separate platforms in a simple and scalable way to help small businesses succeed — not an easy feat.

Stitch was founded on customer empathy. Brandon started the company when he was working at Sandia National Labs as an engineer and selling eco-friendly t-shirts in his spare time. He couldn’t find a solution that allowed him to run his side business, particularly a tool that would let him track his inventory and sales across multiple sales channels. And thus Stitch Labs was born — designed by a small business owner for a small business owner.

The team’s understanding and connection with customers shows. Customers love the product (5 star rating on the Shopify app store ). Some customers have even begged to pay more because they received so much value from the product.

Partners love Stitch too. They see the Stitch platform boosting their customer’s sales and driving even more business to their own platforms. Stitch’s recent award as theBest Emerging Add-On Partner for Xero at Xerocon is a great example of Partner response.

While many investors run from small business solutions, we embrace these investments because they close the gap between consumers and businesses. Small businesses need data-driven enterprise solutions to boost their revenue, but solutions have to target these businesses more like consumers as often there is only one decision-maker, the business owner. In fact, high velocity companies that sell to individuals or individual departments within an enterprise (such as New Relic or 3scale) have increasingly adopted many of the same techniques.

With our investment in Stitch Labs, we appreciate the opportunity to join the “good guys” (and gals), grab an oar and get rowing. You’ll certainly be hearing more from them!