When Greg Maxin was working in a student club back in university and they were working with a non-profit organization in an investment club, he said the group was making decisions on with whom to invest money.

He said they had two problems: First, was making sure they had unbiased decisions in giving out funding as they knew many of the applicants personally. The second was that they had a lot of applicants and a lot of investors.

“So, that was a very cumbersome process and it turns out software is very good for solving both of these problems,” he said.

“Both the bias, and then also just for automating and streamlining that whole decision making.”

That’s when they first developed what would become the basis for DecisionHub, a software as a service (SaaS) tool that could intake large numbers of applicants and strip away any bias there may be in the selection process.

“We kind of got some natural referrals and I thought, ‘OK, we actually have something here in terms of business, more people want this, Maxin said.

“Since then, I’ve just taken it and see what I can do to grow with it.”

It’s a simple, three-step process where organizations provide an intake form and applications are collected and submitted. Then, there’s the evaluation process. An organization can set up its own rubric, with different weightings and different algorithms for normalization, Maxin said.

“Then, you can bring in your reviewers assign it and you can track the whole process through dashboards and then export analytics, aggregate data on things,” he said.

It’s a services that’s transportable anywhere, and Maxin is already operating in several provinces with multiple clients.

Calgary’s ecosystem is ideal

Maxin said he’s a tech guy at heart and loves seeing the products he’s built and coded get used.  He needed a little bit more understanding of how to run a business before taking the next step.

That brought him to Calgary and the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program. He said wanted to embed himself in the tech ecosystem, and chose Calgary because of the proximity to the mountains and the trail system.

“I like seeing the impact… that’s the gratification that I get a lot of times,” Maxin said.

“I’m definitely not as strong on the sales side of thing and that’s partly what this program is really helping with is nailing down – branding, marketing, the sales tactics, sales calls. That will help me then expand my business beyond just the word of mouth and referrals that I’ve been kind of relying on to date.”

One of the things he’s learned is that founder-led sales are key. Founders are the ones who believe passionately in their product or business and they’re the ones that should be peddling their wares to potential clients.

“You should be doing the sale yourself, focusing on that. Don’t try to outsource it because you’re best at selling your own product.”

Maxin said the goal for the next two to three years is expansion of his client base. But he wants to naturally grow the company; like many others he’s not looking at outside investment to build the company. He wants to bootstrap the whole things as best he can.

“I think investment brings a lot of stress,” he said.

“It can also bring a lot of other goals maybe you’re not super aligned with because investors now have a say in the direction of your company.”

Maxin would like to continue expansion in Canada and then the United States. There’s also an opportunity to begin working with scholarship programs, foundations and other organizations that offer grant money.

“We’ve really got the competitiveness in the small- and medium space or nonprofit space right now,” he said.

“Long term, building out those software suites and have feature parity with the larger software’s companies and then that’s when we can kind of try and see if we can penetrate those markets.”