Welcome to the first in our new series examining the relationships and rationale behind our co-investments with our fund partners. Read on about “Why We Made This Deal” with Roble Ventures and Dragonboat.
What is Dragonboat?
Getting product development teams to effectively collaborate in fast-growing organizations can often seem like trying to steer a canoe without a paddle.
Dragonboat Founder and CEO Becky Flint had an intimate understanding of that dilemma in managing cross-functional product development teams. While building the product portfolio management operations for fast-growing companies like PayPal, Shutterfly, Bigcommerce and Feedzai, Becky worked with dozens of project portfolio management (PPM) tools. But none adequately supported the needs of these fast-paced, outcome-focused product organizations. So she built them herself, and helped fast-track many a new service and product offering for these leading industry disrupters.
In 2018, Becky set out on her own to create a platform that would enhance collaboration and efficiency in product management. She launched Dragonboat.io with a mission to help product development leaders drive more business results, faster.
Today, the company offers an AI-powered platform for product operating models, including strategic portfolio management, customer-centric product management, and dynamic resource management. Dragonboat’s platform is now used across industries, with customers including large banks, broadcasters, auto manufacturers, IT and cyber security firms, and global human resources.
What Attracted Us to Dragonboat?
In 2021, GingerBread Capital Partner Ita Ekpoudom got a warm introduction through a mutual connection to Becky Flint.
Ita herself had experienced the complexities—and frustrations—of managing cross-functional product development teams early in her career, as a product manager at American Express and later at Travelclick, a global provider of data and revenue-generating solutions for hoteliers.
She recalled the over-reliance on manual systems—sometimes as rudimentary as emailing Powerpoint and Excel spreadsheet attachments back and forth to track product development iterations, file histories, resource allocation and budget planning—that were rife with errors and inefficiencies. Yet there were no good software tools at the time for product developers to manage it all in one place.
Becky had raised a seed round to launch a pilot SaaS solution and her impressive background in product development management piqued Ita’s interest.
While it was too early for GingerBread to make an investment in Dragonboat [we typically invest at the Series A stage and beyond], Ita put in a call to our good friend Sergio Monsalve.
Sergio had enjoyed a successful career in venture capital with a track record of big exits, including a company called Adaptive Insights, a cloud-based, collaborative tool that helped finance pros with planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. Sergio had recently launched his own firm, Roble Ventures, and was wrapping up raising Fund I to focus on seed-stage investments in workplace productivity solutions.
Ita recognized a potential match for Roble’s first investment in Dragonboat and connected Sergio to Becky.
“When I met Becky, I knew she was building something special,” said Sergio. “Her first-hand expertise solving product scaling challenges is unparalleled. And her passion is infectious. You can’t find a better founder-market fit.”