Capado

Ted Elliott had already achieved significant success selling his previous company, Job Science, to Bullhorn for a multi-million dollar exit where he and his family retained 70% ownership. But after six months of searching for his next venture, Elliott found himself at a crossroads. A friend called inviting him to dinner with "two guys from Spain" who were building DevOps tools for Salesforce. Elliott was planning a trip to Australia, but something about their pitch—"we make it so deployments don't blow up on Salesforce"—intrigued him enough to attend. By the end of dinner, he was asking to invest.

The two Spanish founders had already proven product-market fit, receiving an acquisition offer from Salesforce itself. However, they believed the opportunity was even larger. Elliott joined their $7.5 million Series A round alongside Insight Partners and Salesforce Ventures. His initial role was meant to be as an advisor helping them scale in North America, but within two board meetings, the founders realized they needed someone to run the company. Elliott negotiated a unique power structure: he would be in charge unless both founders and the Insight investor agreed to fire him.

When Elliott walked in the door, the company had $4.25 million in ARR. Within the first year, he grew that to $15 million while expanding the team from 30 people in Spain to about 100 across both regions. His strategy was aggressive: hire as many talented people as possible and spend the $7.5 million rapidly to demonstrate scalability.

Elliott made a critical discovery: 80% of the world's Salesforce DevOps community lived in India in one of three cities and attended one of three schools. He sent his COO, Sanjay Guadwani, to Bangalore to run a training session. "There are people lined up for blocks trying to get into the training center," Guadwani reported. This insight became the foundation for a highly targeted go-to-market strategy focused on the top 5,000 enterprise software buyers in the world. The company defined its total addressable market clearly and executed against it with precision.

Elliott's personal mission became the driving force. He had been diagnosed with stage three rectal cancer three months into the job and was told he would die. Instead, he decided to "go big or go home." Through 12 rounds of chemo and radiation, four surgeries, and eventually COVID-19, Elliott maintained the company's momentum. His leadership approach was unconventional but effective: he recruited 15 people from his previous company Job Science who wanted to work with him again, created a clear value system (COPA: Customer Success, Over Deliver, People are the Code, Always Build Trust), and defined a mission statement—"make release days obsolete."

The company achieved world-class unit economics with 140% net revenue retention, 90% logo retention, and 95% revenue retention, with customers returning within eight months to buy additional products worth 40% of their initial purchase. Fifty percent of new revenue in Q4 came from existing customers buying more.

Capado closed its Series B at a valuation north of $350 million, raising $96 million. The company serves 400 customers from the top 5,000 target list and employs 340 people, including 50 engineers and 51 quota-carrying sales reps. With a run rate of $40 million in ARR and 100%+ growth on new revenue, Elliott is executing the "Smokey and the Bandit" strategy—drafting behind Salesforce while competitors don't see them coming. Elliott credits much of the company's success to hiring people he's built relationships with over 20 years, particularly from his Salesforce ecosystem. He positions Capado as his "opus," driven by genuine passion to solve a real problem rather than purely financial motivations.