SalesTechStar Interview with Matt Goebel, Founder and CEO at Woven

Matt Goebel, Founder and CEO at Woven chats about the benefits of business management platforms in this short catch-up:

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Matt, tell us about yourself and the story behind Woven…we’d love to hear more about how the platform has evolved since inception.

The idea for Woven developed during a decade I spent consulting and building software within the multi-unit business space. The catalyst for starting it came as a way for me to help my wife because of the problems that she faced from managing multiple businesses at the same time. Burnout is high across industries, but the franchise industry has borne the brunt of the weight. Running multiple different locations of a business in the midst of today’s constantly changing workforce and volatile economy isn’t easy.

Shortly after an early version was built for her, other franchisees within the same brand started to ask for it, then use it within other brands they owned. In other words, we quickly validated that there was indeed a hole we could fill in the industry. We’re passionate about ensuring multi-unit business owners have everything they need to be successful in the most efficient ways possible. By providing one seamless dashboard for everything, we’re taking the administrative, trivial tasks that wear these multi-unit business owners down and eliminating them.

Woven recently announced a fresh funding round. Can you tell us about this growth stage and what the near-future for the platform looks like?

In order to raise funding to expand Woven’s impact, we opted to pursue financing from a partner rather than an institutional market. One of our biggest customers, Glow Brands, was chosen because they received a powerful ROI of our ability to streamline operations, communications and facility management, using Woven at 240 locations across the multiple brands they operate. By partnering with Glow Brands, we gained transparent insights into the pains and needs of our customers and could hold to our mission of being a partner to multi-unit and multi-brand businesses.

With this funding, we’ll be able to further our efforts to streamline managing people, operations and locations. We’re using the funds to bring on more sales and marketing team members. We know the value sales and marketing teams hold and we’re excited about how Woven will continue to grow with them on board.

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What is the marketplace demand and what are the current trends for business management software looking like? In what ways have industries/companies benefited from these features? Can you share some quick highlights?

Multi-unit business management has been a widespread challenge within the franchise industry, resulting in low productivity, high employee turnover and disjointed systems. Many businesses sought to acquire more software tools as a result, but then a new problem arose – learning so many interfaces to do the job impacted the business’s ability to train employees and the employee’s ability to do their jobs efficiently and well.

With Woven’s platform, businesses can streamline back office work and manage people, locations and operations from a centralized site, enabling multi-unit operators to increase accountability, productivity and consistency.

When it comes to driving growth funding from a current customer base, what are the five thoughts you’d share with startup founders?

For starters, there’s more value in taking funding from a customer/strategic partner versus the institutional market where it’s about growth at all costs. By turning to a customer, you are able to get fully transparent insights into the pains and needs of your customers.

Not to mention, it allows you to stay true to yourself and your mission. Establish your product market fit and customer success process first so your customers can see the ROI of your product or offering. Once they do, finding a partner becomes much easier.

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A few thoughts on the future of the B2B tech segment before we wrap up?

Oddly enough, the economic conditions created by Covid turned out to be a good thing for the B2B tech segment, but perhaps too good. Instead of healthy, sustainable growth, the segment overgrew. It is resulting in some doom and gloom headlines of layoffs right now, but really we’re just seeing the frothiness of the market coming off the top.

At the core, B2B tech isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it has a great future due to underlying demographics and a smaller workforce than what is needed or desired by businesses. The tight labor market will continue to drive those businesses to adopt technology to make their current workforce more efficient and productive.