Bob Neveu, co-founder and CEO of Certify

Certify, the Portland-based company that was a pioneer in cloud-based expense management software, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a string of acquisitions that have more than doubled its headcount and expanded its global reach.

This week the company announced it has acquired Captio, a competitor based in Spain. It is Certify’s first acquisition outside North America and its most significant international venture to date.

“Captio is a fantastic expense management provider in Barcelona, with customers in Europe, and an especially strong customer base in Spain, the UK, and Italy,” Bob Neveu, Certify’s CEO and co-founder, tells Maine Startups Insider. “We’re really happy to have them onboard.”

The Captio acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, comes on the heels of a July announcement that Certify had acquired Abacus, a New York-based startup that provides a platform for real-time corporate expense reporting and reimbursement, and the purchase last fall of an online travel-booking technology platform from nuTravel.

The string of deals have been funded by K1 Investment Management LLC, an El Segundo, Calif.-based investment firm that acquired Certify last summer for $100 million.

And Neveu, in an interview with MSI, said the company isn’t done in the M&A department as it looks to fill in geographic and feature-oriented holes in Certify’s current offerings and go head-to-head with Concur, the largest enterprise-level expense-management software company, which is owned by SAP SE.

“K1 is an aggressive organization that wants to put more dollars to work,” Neveu said. “We look forward to continue working with them, particularly to secure additional acquisitions to grow the business in the right direction.”

The market for travel and expense management software is growing at a strong pace and is estimated to reach $2.7 billion by 2022, according to IDC, a market intelligence firm that tracks the IT and consumer technology industries.

Certify is experiencing this new, post-acquisition growth phase as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Bob Neveu and his brother Alan, co-founder and CTO, launched the company in 2008. It was the first company in the space to offer users the ability to capture receipts with the camera on their Blackberries or Smartphones.

With the recent acquisitions, Certify’s headcount is now at 360, according to Neveu, including north of 150 who are spread across three offices in Portland. That’s a far cry from the company’s first four employees who worked out of a cramped Exchange Street walkup.

“It’s been a hell of a run,” Neveu said. “The first million is the hardest, but now it’s just amazing. We’re knocking down barrier after barrier, and every quarter is better than the last. It’s a great time for us.”

A multi-brand strategy

When K1 acquired a majority stake in Certify, it took a number of other expense-management software companies it had previously acquired and put them under the Certify umbrella, though they retained their separate brands.

With the recent additions, Certify now has five brands in its portfolio: Certify, Nexonia, Tallie, Captio, and Abacus.

While the trend in tech may be to fold an acquired company, its team, product, and customers into the acquiring company’s core product, Neveu said Certify doesn’t like that “one-size-fits-all strategy” and is taking a different approach.

“We’re big believers in a multi-brand strategy,” he said. “We believe applications can serve niches, both in size and segments of businesses, and that ultimately if you said to a customer, ‘I know you spent all this time and money reviewing this solution, but we’re going to force you to move to something else’… We think that’s a bad conversation to have, and a bad business strategy.”

A growing global presence

Certify already offers its own expense management software in Europe and other parts of the world (it’s available in 64 languages and has customers in 50 countries), but the Captio deal will allow Certify to more aggressively offer its products throughout Europe and specifically in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, where Captio has a strong customer base and a growing presence.

“Up until last week, we had a domestic business,” Neveu said. “We had a global product, but a domestic business.”

The Captio acquisition is the latest move in a concerted effort by Certify to grow its international presence. Earlier this year, Certify announced a partnership with Western Union to provide international business payment capabilities to Certify customers with operations outside the United States, and in 2017 it expanded its relationship with UK-based Sage Software to provide enhanced product integrations and services to shared customers.

Certify now has more than 10,000 customers in over 90 countries.

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