Bordable

In 2016, Jeb Banner was running Smallbox, a creative agency, when United Way of Central Indiana approached him about building a board portal. After scoping the project, the cost was prohibitive for the client. But Jeb had already started two nonprofits himself and felt the pain acutely: nonprofit boards were managing themselves through email chains, attachments, and what he calls "digital duct tape." With his co-founders Jason Ward and Andy Clark, he recognized this was a real product opportunity, not just a services project. Within six weeks, they built an MVP and tested it with six or seven local nonprofits for feedback.

The team rebuilt the MVP from scratch based on user feedback and launched Bordable in early 2017. Their first customers were friends and family willing to pay $49-$99/month. Critically, they had already created structural separation by spinning out "Gravy Lab," a separate software business, which allowed Bordable to exist as its own entity rather than competing for attention in the agency. This separation was crucial—Jeb had spent nearly 12 years building 10 different products within the agency context, and every single one failed because payroll demands always pushed product work to the back of the line. "You can't serve two masters," he reflected.

The non-profit market was largely unaware that board management software existed. They were the first to say, "We're going after nonprofit boards specifically," and the market needed time to wake up and get educated. But once nonprofits saw the solution, they were grateful—the pain was constant.

After friends and family customers, their first "stranger customers" (who would actually fire them if unhappy) came in February and March 2017. They invested heavily in paid directories like Captera, which drove high-quality trial traffic. By mid-2017, they realized they were generating hundreds of trials and thousands of leads monthly through content and SEO, but they weren't harvesting the pipeline effectively. They brought on their first VP of Marketing, who built a content machine and set up HubSpot and marketing automation. Growth accelerated through 2017, and they raised $1.3M in seed funding over a 12-month process from January 2017 to January 2018.

Early on, Boardable succeeded with product-led growth because self-serve sign-ups were simple and the price was transparent and low. But around 2020, as the product matured and grew more complex, they realized product-led growth alone had a ceiling. The fundamental issue: the user of board software (an admin assistant or EA) often isn't the buyer (the executive director). Jeb brought on the first VP of Sales in January 2020 and built out a sales team with BDRs. They implemented machine learning to score leads based on firmographics, marketing behavior, and product behavior—determining whether a prospect should stay self-serve (about 25% of new business) or receive a sales touch. A key insight came from their data scientist: when a trial user built a board agenda and deleted an item, they were almost certainly going to convert. This behavioral signal became predictive.

Channels that worked: Captera, Google AdWords (though requiring constant refinement), organic SEO, and eventually LinkedIn as they moved upmarket. Channels that didn't: Twitter (disappointing ROI), various sponsorships, and outbound SDR outsourcing (mixed results). The sales cycle was typically 30-40 days, often closing in one call because prospects already knew what they wanted from their trial experience.

Bordable serves 2,000 customers in 40 countries, with roughly 80% nonprofit and 20% for-profit. The company has 50 employees and has raised over $12M (including a Series A in 2020 with High Alpha). They're in the multiple seven-figures ARR range, growing at roughly 2x year-over-year, and working toward eight figures. Deal sizes have doubled year-over-year as they've moved upmarket—adding features like Spotlight (a proprietary video conferencing solution integrated with Amazon Chime), e-signature functionality, and solving the "calendar of record" problem that plagued nonprofit boards. Unlike competitors, they don't just integrate Zoom; they built a seamless, single-screen experience where board members can see documents, video, agenda, and discussions simultaneously, whether they're hybrid or remote. Jeb emphasized they're masters of the hybrid board meeting, not video conferencing.

Reflecting on the journey, Jeb credited Andy Clark's SaaS experience, the right problem at the right time with the right team and market conditions, and the critical decision to separate the product business from the agency. He also shared that this wasn't all smooth sailing—he and his co-founder Joe had built nearly 10 failed products over 12 years before Boardable. The lesson: solving your own pain (Jeb was a board chair), having beginner's mind curiosity, and refusing to give up despite repeated setbacks.