Interview with a CEO
APICBASE CEO
Carl Jacobs
1. In one sentence, what does your company offer and who do you target? Apicbase offers Food & Beverage Management software for the hospitality industry, specifically for restaurant chains, hotels, large-scale caterers, and dark kitchens. The software streamlines and automates back of house processes such as inventory management, procurement and production planning, which results in lower waste levels and higher product margins.
2. How did you make your way into the world of SaaS and start your company? Actually, Apicbase started as a hardware company. We had developed a mobile food photography studio for professional kitchens. This studio had a tiny cloud component where customers could store their pictures. Quickly after we started selling the hardware, customers began asking for more software support. So we began to write more advanced software at the customers' request. Through our talks with foodservice professionals, we realised that dedicated F&B management software had a huge potential. That is how we moved into the world of SaaS.
3. What do you think makes Apicbase unique? Apicbase's stands out from its competitors because of the way it approaches processes in hospitality. A back of house operation consists of countless moving parts, and they all have to work together seamlessly. Apicbase takes care of that. We provide an end-to-end solution for everything F&B related. It is a single source of truth where all the moving parts come together. Our clients no longer have to update endless amounts of apps and spreadsheets but have a clean dashboard to monitor operations and execute back of house tasks.
4. Apicbase just raised a new funding round to accelerate growth. What is your advice for other founders in terms of fundraising at an early stage? Find a party that believes in the potential of your business. Look for people who are in it for the long run and who want to build your company up with you. A strong network is also essential. In follow up funding rounds, that network might prove to be crucial in finding a good match.
5. The company went through some pivots in the past and is now recognised as a leader in restaurant management software. What are your secrets to pivot successfully? What is most important is to listen carefully to your early customers and to develop a solid vision of where you want to go as a company. After that, it's a matter of execution: build a business plan that turns the vision into a turnover. Stay focused on the metrics and see what works and what doesn't.
6. You have built an international team with the ambition to become an international market leader. What are your strategies to grow internationally? The main focus remains on our core markets (Belgium, Netherlands, UK). Still, we seek to hire sales teams in other European countries to become the European leader in F&B management software. Alongside this, we're also opening up an office in the USA. The customer profile there hits the sweet spot of our target audience but requires a localized approach—servicing a demanding US customer base from Belgium is difficult.
7. There is no easy path to success. What was the biggest challenge you went through and what was your biggest achievement? Definitely, our biggest challenge is to build a great company culture in which top performance is balanced out with happiness. The biggest achievement is to build a performing team that is flexible, willing and ambitious to achieve the goals of the company. We spend a lot of our attention on employee happiness but with the pandemic this can be a very difficult exercise.
8. Given Covid-19, the restaurants and food production companies have been heavily impacted. How is Apicbase doing during this period? How do you mitigate risks and seize opportunities? At the very beginning of the pandemic, no one knew what they were up against. Or how long it was going to take before things returned to normal, let alone what 'normal' would even look like. So Apicbase went into full survival mode, hoping we could stretch whatever resources we had left long enough to make it out the other end. Like many companies, Apicbase asked a lot from its team members: furlough, pay cuts, etc. Luckily they chose to stay on and keep pushing, even during these difficult times. It is thanks to our team that we are where we are today.
The first month of lockdown was really scary but after that initial scare, we noticed that the number of incoming leads started to pick up again. And soon after, we were able to close new deals, which has turned into an upward trajectory that we have maintained throughout the pandemic. In the end, we managed to double our turnover during the pandemic.
9. As a CEO, what do you know now that you wish you had known in the beginning? There’s a bunch of metrics that are important to measure the health of your company. They are different from the standard EBITDA metrics and the sooner you understand those metrics the faster you can use them to steer your direction towards exactly what you need to become a healthy company. Sometimes it takes a while to know the metrics and I would have liked to know some of them sooner. .
10. What advice would you give other founders in the B2B SaaS industry? Following the previous question: get your metrics straight.