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the bus was going, you wanted to be on it. They were in Richmond and hiring at a faster clip and a better talent rate than the tech companies downtown. There was something inherently charismatic about every facet of the company." It's a sentiment that rings true when talking to people about Mann and the ener•y the business exudes. Matt Lim started at Procurify in 2013 but wasn't sure it would last long: "When I joined this com- pany, I actually was going to go to Australia with my partner," Lim says. "I remember telling her, 'Oh, this is only going to take three months.' It should have failed so many times, and it just kept surviving, like a cockroach. And people just kept joining." Lim, now head of marketing, credits much of that to Mann. After leaving Procu- rify for about two years ("started a couple companies, didn't want to do them any- more"), he came back because of the co- founder's vision for the business. "He's always wanted to grow a tech enterprise in Vancouver. And there've been so many points where he's had investor pressure to move to San Francisco, because that's the tech playbook. But he's resisted that forever because he wants to build the community here and show that Van- couver has the potential to compete with the world." The move to Vancouver from Richmond happened around the same time the team raised $7 million in Series A funding. Since then, Procurify has kept expanding in the same building. It's also won clients like San Francisco–based work management plat- form Asana, Elon Musk–founded infrastruc- ture —rm the Boring Company and U.S. marine transportation —rm Canal Barge. Oh, and Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes and Mann eventually did meet. Holmes was a pre–Series A investor in Procurify. "I really like what they're doing, think the senior leadership is fantastic," says Dylan Freeze, a former program manager with the BC Tech Association who now specializes in the BC Tech Fund as an ana- lyst with the Vancouver oœce of Toronto- based Kensington Capital Partners, which manages the $100-million provincial gov- ernment vehicle. "They found a real strong niche in the market and capitalized on it well. From what I've heard, their custom- ers are emphatically happy about the product itself." Muench has overseen three new real estate deals for Procurify in the —ve years he's been working with the company, some- thing he says is pretty standard for an out—t at its stage. But the —rst thing he thinks of when talking about Procurify is a car ride he took with the leadership team soon after meeting them: "I remember we were driving around Richmond and they were like, 'This street is going to be renamed Procurify Avenue.' And it wasn't arrogant, or at all conceited. It was aspirational." F O R T H E P E O P L E As Mann likes to mention whenever he can, people are of utmost importance at Procurify. That was a major takeaway from some of his earlier ventures that didn't work out. It also goes back to something he learned growing up poor in Abbotsford. The son of Indian immigrants, Mann saw "what it's like when you have to shut your doors and tell people that" from his father, who tried a couple of business ideas that ultimately failed. "So maybe inadvertently this direction has led me to try to help people to keep their doors open because I know the pain of what it's like when you have to shut down." Today, Procurify has more than 100 "team members," and policies like Fun O' Clock Fridays—the oœce gets a keg and stops working at 4 p.m.—and lunch-and- learns, where members can present a lec- ture on a topic of their choosing, from the planet Jupiter to the perfect butter chicken recipe. There's also responsible time o£, which gives employees unlimited vaca- tion days to use at their discretion. So far, no one has abused the system. "When you choose to come here, you come here because you want to do something, you want to be excited, you want to be moti- vated," Mann says. As Procurify heads down the road to another round of funding—the company didn't want to reveal too much detail at press time—more hiring will undoubtedly commence, and keeping what it has in place is essential. But life at Procurify isn't for everyone. "It's challenging setting expectations for new hires and how wild and diœcult it actually is going to be," says Megan Murphy, head of people and culture. "Find- ing those people who are going to want to join a team and build something together; it's going to take awhile, and things are going to change fast." Adds director of operations Philip Gray: "The job you got hired to do, in two years, there's zero chance you're doing that job." That can be tough to accept. "You bring new people onboard, and you tell them, We're going to double in size this year, and they say, Well, that sounds irresponsible," Gray says. "But you try to explain that's just what you have to do to get to that pro—tabil- ity range or hit that growth metric you need to raise subsequent rounds to get to your billion-dollar valuation." Back on the roof, Mann, his greying beard belying his youthful exuberance, looks out at the Vancouver skyline. It's prob- ably easy to marvel at how far he's come, but mostly he wants to discuss the future. There's no shortage of things to be excited about. Procurify is looking to launch its own debit card. The company has just hired a VP of product who learned under Mann's old mentor, Boris Wertz. And "spend culture," the buzz phrase it's trying to embed into boardrooms across North America, seems to be taking hold. (It refers to the shared beliefs, values and practices that inform spending money within a business.) "I don't know where we'll be a year or two from now, but if we can focus on genu- inely building a culture, I don't care about today," Mann says, his stare focused and his voice low. "I care about the company we become. My outcome isn't tied to mon- etary; I don't give a shit about that. I come from a life where I'm grateful for this right now. This is 100 times more than I ever grew up with. I just want us to build some- thing that means something." That means giving people what he's found."When I see people walk into this space, and they say, Man, this is better than I've ever had it, I feel so con—dent in myself, I feel my own potential, that to me is a win. That makes me feel like we're doing something." BCBUSINESS.CA "THEY FOUND A REAL STRONG NICHE IN THE MARKET AND CAPITAL- IZED ON IT WELL. FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD, THEIR CUSTOMERS ARE EMPHATICALLY HAPPY ABOUT THE PRODUCT" –Dylan Freeze, analyst, Kensington Capital Partners JUNE 2019 BCBUSINESS 29

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