As the year draws to a close, this season lends itself to reflecting on our goals and whether we’ve accomplished what we sought out to achieve. Time is a funny thing though. In the start-up world, years tend to pass more quickly, like dog years do. Malbek has grown by leaps and bounds since the last time we did a year in review. Although it feels like it has been more than a year, we are so excited to share with you some of the progress we’ve made over the past twelve months.
We grew…A LOT
There are plenty of ways to measure growth, but we’ve been really focused on three metrics in particular – customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, and increasing revenue. In 2019 we experienced success in all areas. Over the past four quarters we tripled the number of customer logos, including several companies that expanded our reach into international territory. In a public forum, such as this, we can’t exactly reveal our revenue figures, but we can say this. 2019 was an outstanding year that saw a 12x increase in our revenue and it continues to climb.
The customer is king
Our new customers span industries and geographies from enterprise software companies to global energy providers. Our customers and partners are the reason we have grown so much this year. The faith they have put in us, even though our company is young, and their willingness to trust us with their most sensitive and mission-critical documents, their contracts, drive us to achieve all we can for them. We work hard every day to fulfill the say/do ratio, saying what we do and doing what we say. As one of our clients, Stryker Canada, puts it: “Our implementation was smooth and swift just as they promised, and the Malbek team was incredibly collaborative to ensure we would go live on schedule. Malbek has proved to be an amazing choice.” And while we don’t like to brag, we don’t mind when our customers do. Another client, nextSource, put it like this: “Malbek clearly had the superior technology of all vendors in our search, and, over the course of the past year, we have been able to take advantage of many innovative features that Malbek developed release after release.”
The evolving product
Everybody’s talking about artificial intelligence (AI) these days, and we are no exception. The idea that AI and machine learning can be applied to contract management, improving the way an agreement is constructed, reviewed, and executed, is an exciting one and not far from being a reality. We have been working on proprietary, patent-pending technology that will enable a range of AI capabilities, like identifying which contract terms are most favorable and which deals have a tendency to be delayed. In addition to working on our AI capabilities, we have continued to focus on usability, one of the aspects of the Malbek Contrax™ solution we get the most compliments about. We’ve also added a number of integrations to our Malbek Konnect™ marketplace, making it even easier for our customers to seamlessly flow contract related data between critical systems.
The success of 2019 would not have been possible without our growing eco-system of consulting and technology partners who have made numerous introductions and helped forge vital connections. And, of course, the Malbek employees are the life blood of all we do. Their dedication and energy are second to none. It is an honor and privilege to work with so many smart, talented, and driven individuals who together make the Malbek team so special.