Interweave (Interweave Smart Solutions, DBA Integration Technologies)

Bruce McGown founded Interweave in 2006 to challenge the dominance of massive corporate integration engines like Tidco and WebMethods. The company started with roots in legacy enterprise integration but saw an opportunity to shift toward a pure-play SaaS model. By the time Interweave formally launched in 2006, Bruce had already spent years (2004-2006) converting the platform from an enterprise engine to a cloud-native SaaS solution—a three-year journey that would define the company's identity.

Interweave positioned itself in a very specific niche: CRM integration with financial systems, billing platforms, and ERP web services. The product was architected around configurability rather than pre-programmed workflows. This was the key differentiator. While competitors sold rigid, pre-built business processes, Interweave let customers choose which objects and transactions to integrate between systems—whether connecting QuickBooks to Salesforce, or managing multiple company files by currency and line of business. The platform could handle 27 protocol-specific adapters and integrated with approximately 47 merchant service providers, giving it surprising breadth for a niche product.

The go-to-market strategy leaned heavily on partnerships with solution providers in the QuickBooks ecosystem. When Interweave launched in 2006, very few integration vendors existed, so Bruce worked with solution providers to build what they wanted—but in a configurable way. The first enterprise customer was ACS out of Dallas, paying $1.5 million annually. As the company pivoted toward Salesforce, the pricing model shifted dramatically down to $48 per user per month, enabling a middle-market and SMB focus. By the time of this interview, Interweave had accumulated roughly 8,000 customers over its 12-year history, though only 4,000 remained active—meaning 50% had churned out as they upgraded to newer CRMs or financial solutions.

The company's unit economics proved sustainable: $125 average revenue per customer per month, supporting about 4,000 paying customers and generating approximately $500K MRR (up from $375K a year prior—30% YoY growth). What's remarkable is the expansion revenue story. Despite 25% annual revenue churn, Interweave achieved roughly 40% gross expansion, resulting in 115% net revenue retention. This expansion came primarily from upselling additional modules and product add-ons (payment gateways, customer portals, etc.) that had been built deeply into the Salesforce ecosystem but hadn't yet been ported to newer CRM partners like ORO CRM, Sugar CRM, BPM Online, and SweetCRM. Bruce's 18-person team (6 in Toronto, 12 in Russia) operated entirely bootstrapped, with Bruce personally funding any cash gaps. This lean operation proved resilient but also constrained: customer acquisition cost modeling wasn't yet formalized, and the sales operation relied more on partnerships than dedicated sales teams.

By the time of this interview, Interweave was at an inflection point. Bruce was actively rebranding the company from a "solution-specific CRM integration engine" to an "intelligent CRM integration platform," positioning Interweave as the neutral "Switzerland" between competing CRM vendors. The rebranding effort, conducted in partnership with Gartner, included new website, new offerings, and expansion into emerging vendor ecosystems. The Boston office, opened in May, signaled ambitions to scale in a new market. Though still bootstrapped and profitable-ish, Bruce indicated this was a "three-year march" with the long game in mind—neither a quick exit nor venture-backed hypergrowth, but patient, customer-focused expansion into a larger TAM.