Serial entrepreneur Gasser pumps S$100,000 into Collabspot

By Digital News Asia May 27, 2013

To join as director of business development, option to increase stake in future
Collabspot first from current JFDI.Asia batch of startups to secure follow-on funding

Serial entrepreneur Gasser pumps S$100,000 into Collabspot SINGAPORE-based Collabspot Pte Ltd said that Laurent Gasser has agreed to join its board as director of business development and will also invest an initial S$100,000 in the business, reserving the option to increase his stake in future.

Gasser is a veteran Google Enterprise Partner and Google Apps Reseller, Collabspot said in a statement.

“Laurent [Gasser] generously gave his time to Collabspot as a mentor in the JFDI.Asia accelerator programme,” said Collabspot founder and chief executive officer Jeremi Joslin. “It was immediately apparent that his experience as the first non-American to be trained to provide Google Apps Solutions, even before they were launched, could give us a huge boost as we scale up worldwide.

“Laurent and I found ourselves working well together and it’s now a huge honour that he has agreed to join me to help lead the business in an executive role,” he added.

Gasser is a serial entrepreneur who brought Google its first multinational client for the Apps product range before co-founding Revevol in France in 2007. Now covering 10 countries, Revevol is a worldwide network dedicated to Google Apps.

Collabspot is a sales email platform that integrates CRM (customer relationship management) with Gmail. Its users are typically small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).

“When I met Jeremi [Joslin] I was struck by two things – the traction he had already achieved with Collabspot, and his vision for the future,” said Gasser.

“I join the business as it approaches break-even on its fixed costs and I am excited by the opportunity to use the capital that I am injecting to ramp up growth internationally,” he added.

Collabspot joined the JFDI.Asia accelerator programme in February 2013, receiving its first investment from the accelerator along with mentoring through the 100-day programme. Collabspot will present itself at JFDI.Asia’s forthcoming Demo Day on June 3.

It is the first company from the current JFDI.Asia batch of startups to secure follow-on funding. It was founded and incorporated in Singapore in 2012 by Joslin and a team of developers from the Philippines.

Collabspot claims that SMEs which use its platform see three benefits:

1) Simplified data entry, with the ability to save emails to CRM with a single click without having to manually enter them;

2) Increased CRM adoption, as a whole company can instantly view contact info, upcoming and recent activities, and manage opportunities and cases without opening the CRM; and

3) Increased productivity as data becomes more accessible to business developers and marketing/sales reps.

Related Story: