Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 1)

Wonderful story of a SaaS company that has invested $10M to get to $10M ARR over 9 years. Lots of options ahead to exit profitably or to keep going.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Tyler Eyamie: I was born in Ottawa, Canada. My entire family has been in the Ottawa area for decades. I started my life here in Ottawa and then ended up spending four years in the eastern part of Nova Scotia attending my undergrad at Saint Francis Xavier University. I took a business degree over there.

I was the first person in my family to attend university. It was a humbling honor over there. I am married and have two beautiful daughters aged 9 and 11. I co-founded Fusebill and I am excited to talk about today my Fusebill journey. 

Sramana Mitra: When did you come out of school?

Tyler Eyamie: I graduated in the year 2000. 

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after you came out of school?

Tyler Eyamie: Right out of school, I had a massive amount of debt. My first job was with Bell Canada call center. I was helping in their escalation type support for high-speed internet, which in 2000 was cutting edge technology. My goal there was to get business experience but most importantly to get a job to pay some of the debt that I had.

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to? How long were you at Bell Canada?

Tyler Eyamie: I was with Bell Canada for about a year. I realized quickly that it was very difficult to make an impact working for a large company. I started looking for a job where I could use my commerce degree and also my passion for connecting with people.

I started looking in the Ottawa area for customer-facing, more sales-focused jobs in the technology space. In the Saturday edition of the Ottawa newspaper, I found an opportunity with an up and coming startup named Protus IP Solutions. That company had just raised a little bit of capital. I ended up taking an entry-level sales job there. I think I was employee 10 or 11.

I felt extremely fortunate to have stayed with that company for about 11 years. I saw it go from a small startup with 10 people to 450 people with an almost $100 million run rate. Even more fantastic was that even though it was venture-backed, that company had only raised $8 million to get to that level.

I started as a junior salesperson there and moved up the ranks to become Director of Business Development, which was one step under the executive table. In 2010, the company was acquired by its number one competitor for $220 million. It was a great outcome for a company up here in Ottawa, Canada.

I learned a lot from seeing a company starting with 10 employees and grow to 450 employees. In the beginning, there were hardly any customers, and it grew to have 550,000 paying customers every month. I saw all the ups and downs that you’d see in a startup company over that time.

That leads me to the founding of Fusebill. The Protus acquisition was similar to a king of the market taking out the queen of the market. It was a customer-base acquisition. They took all the customers and a few of the employees. The rest of the employees were let go.

In the first 90 days, the 450 employees were reduced to 100. I was asked by the acquirer to stay, but I was ready to go on to the next chapter in my life. I did well enough as a director-level employee in an exit of that level to sit back and think about what I wanted to do personally. At that time, my daughters were still very young.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie
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