Assent is a leading global supply chain sustainability management solution that helps manufacturers around the world with product compliance and sustainability. Founded in 2010, the Ottawa-based company helps manufacturers collect, curate, and leverage supply chain data with AI, needed to meet environmentally and socially responsible product standards. Today, Assent is the market leader in Europe and North America for facilitating the exchange of critical information between suppliers and manufacturers.
When CEO Andrew Waitman joined Assent back in September 2014, the company had just found its product market fit. He and the company’s founders began building out the business around the thesis that manufacturing supply chains would need to exchange sustainability and regulatory information. They went on to grow a team of experts and to build a SaaS solution to facilitate the customer’s job to be done.
By 2016, Assent was ready to secure some institutional capital and went out to raise its Series A round. While Volition Capital led that round, just a few weeks before closing the round, Waitman reached out to Richard Black, a Managing Partner at First Ascent Ventures, a Toronto-based VC that invests in early-stage enterprise B2B software companies. “I’ve known Richard for 30 years,” says Waitman. “I wanted to have a Canadian investor on the cap table and, fortunately, we were able to work them into the deal.”
While Waitman had marketed Assent in Canada to Canadian VCs in 2015, he was unable to attract any other Canadian investors up to that point, he found a great match in First Ascent. “We knew Andrew had real operating chops, that he was very thoughtful, and that he was numbers driven,” says Black. “He had a good product that people wanted to buy and knew how to work with management teams having been a VC himself earlier in his career.”
“We were very confident that he could build a successful business,” notes First Ascent Ventures Managing Partner, Tony van Marken, “And that’s exactly what he wound up doing.”
Assent in the Ascendant
After raising its Series A, Assent started to take off. The company went on to raise three additional rounds, including a US$350 million Series D round in 2021 led by Vista Equity Partners, while also growing its annual recurring revenue from USD$5 million to well over USD$100 million. Over the years, Assent also grew from servicing just a handful of customers to servicing more than 1,000, while growing its employee headcount to over 900.
Throughout that entire time, First Ascent Ventures was a valuable resource for Waitman. “Richard and Tony have more operating and investing experience than virtually anyone in Canada,” he says. “They were always a great sounding board for me and offered prudent advice around how to handle various situations. I try to surround myself with people I trust and who bring value rather than create drama. Richard and Tony fit that mold perfectly.”
“Andrew and his team were very good at hitting their forecasts from day one,” says van Marken. “They blew through $100 million in ARR in seven years and have managed to steadily increase their average contract value along the way. When companies are willing to pay six or seven figures on an annual basis for a product, as they are for Assent, you know you’ve got something special.”
A Supersized Exit
By 2024, one of Assent’s existing investors, Warburg Pincus, was looking for liquidity. That led to a private deal where Vista Equity Partners took the controlling share of the business at a valuation north of $1 billion.
“Assent is a true great Canadian success story, “ says Black. “There aren’t a lot of enterprise software companies that are created here, are still run by Canadians, and that are approaching $200 million in ARR and are profitable.”
That sentiment is shared by van Marken. “If you look back at the period from 2021 to 2024, not many Canadian software companies got acquired for more than $1 billion like they did,” he says. “It was a great outcome for Andrew, for our LPs, and for the Canadian tech ecosystem.” First Ascent Ventures wound up generating an MOIC of 6.20% for the deal, returning 45% of its first fund, and winning the VC Regional Impact Award, Central Canada.
“Richard and Tony stepped up when no one else in Canada would and provided great advice and support along the way,” says Waitman. “They had the right instincts and it paid off in a great deal for everyone. I couldn’t be happier.”
