Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2005, you quit your job. How did you get started? What was your next step?

Lori Steele Contorer: I started looking around the world for the best technology. I’ve seen many companies throw money at technologies in the early 2000s and I feel if you don’t understand the process you’re trying to fix or improve, then you’re going to fail.

I discovered a technology in Australia and acquired that company. It was a small company at that time but they have been doing online voting since 1996. They had done government elections in 2002 and 2003. I thought of finding the right technology as a base, and then I can bring together real expertise in election administration and technology. At the same time, by talking to customers throughout the world about the problems, we can build an organization that can build a technology platform that can transform democracy.

Sramana Mitra: I get it at the higher level. I’m trying to get it at the mundane granular level. How did you pull the product together? Did you raise money? Who were the first customers?

Lori Steele Contorer: Because I acquired a technology, we already had some existing customers. We had a customer list, which was great. It included some universities in Australia and the government of UK.

Sramana Mitra: So you acquired the company, not just the technology?

Lori Steele Contorer: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: So then let’s do the mechanics of how you acquired the company. Where did the money to acquire this company come from?

Lori Steele Contorer: I started meeting with angel funders. I funded the company myself for the first few years. Then I started talking to angel investors. I focused primarily on the opportunity in private sector elections because I thought that would be a faster sale. I pitched angels and raised half a million dollars. I used that to begin to develop the company in the United States. I acquired the technology company in Australia for stocks. I didn’t want to use the capital for anything other than growing the business.

We had an office in San Diego and Melbourne. The technology remained in Melbourne because that’s where the CTO was. I started to build out the corporate, sales, marketing, and the election administration teams in the United States. We began marketing to all kinds of organizations like labor unions, credit unions, and associations. What’s interesting is we continued to serve the customers that the original company had. We were finding that the adoption in the private sector wasn’t as fast as we thought it would be but because the company had experience in having done a government election in the UK, it turns out that UK and Australia were both looking to go for online voting for particular voter populations.

We took a risk and said, “Even though we said we’re going to be in the private sector space, the government seemed to be coming on faster, and they’re bigger.” We talked to the Board and the Board of Directors decided that it made a lot of sense to make this pivot. We did and we delivered two of the most important online voting projects ever to have been delivered to the world in 2007. That changed everything about the way we were doing business.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer
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