AppDirect, a San Francisco- and Montreal-based platform for buying, selling and managing tech through a network of IT advisors, has received a significant investment from CDPQ to strengthen its financing program for small- and medium-sized tech businesses.
“Our Invest program is purpose-built to empower our technology advisors,” said Emanuel Bertolin, AppDirect’s chief revenue officer. “To keep up with today’s ever-changing market, technology merchants need fast access to capital to accelerate their growth.”
With CDPQ’s investment, AppDirect will bring together tech providers, advisors and buyers through its Capital Invest fund. This will help facilitate the placement of tech companies’ products in front of potential customers.
AppDirect’s Capital Invest program provides capital for tech businesses in the form of upfront payments. Interested firms can apply by submitting their business data from the last three years. Within a short period of time, AppDirect will present an all-cash offer, along with back-office support and provider contracts, based on the firm’s annual recurring revenue.
Upon the loan’s closing, businesses begin making annuity payments to AppDirect, which continue in perpetuity.
“With AppDirect Capital, tech advisors can take advantage of innovative capital options to expand their business or invest in the future, making increased access to this program all the more crucial,” Bertolin added.
Founded in 2009 by Nicolas Desmarais and Dan Saks, AppDirect set out to create a platform that could connect business owners with tech – particularly cloud tech – while streamlining traditional onboarding processes. Today, AppDirect offers a suite of tools that enable businesses to monetize or purchase tech products across a variety of channels and devices.
“We support the ability to help businesses monetize their products and services through their own white-labeled marketplace platform,” explained Desmarais in an email interview with TechCrunch. “We also provide the opportunity for our advisor community to procure technology for their customers directly from the AppDirect catalog.”
AppDirect generates income through its monetization services for businesses, as well as transaction fees from products and services bought and sold on its platform.
The company’s large network of tech advisors refer or resell business solutions to their customers from the AppDirect catalog of business-to-business (B2B) products. Providers who develop, provision, invoice, deploy and support services also use the AppDirect marketplace platform to power their own custom B2B commerce ecosystems.
AppDirect launched the Capital Invest program in 2021 and with the addition of the $100 million investment, the program is now valued at $180 million. Although this is a small fraction of the nearly half a billion dollars in debt and equity that AppDirect has raised from investors such as JP Morgan Chase, Mithril Capital Management, and Inovia Capital, it is a significant step towards expanding their reach and helping more small- and medium-sized tech businesses thrive.
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