Inside TrueContext’s $150M acquisition | Episode 265

Ottawa Business Journal

More than 20 years after its founding, TrueContext Corp. has been acquired by U.S. private equity firm Battery Ventures in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $150 million. The change in ownership is a big milestone for its founder, Alvaro Pombo, a native of Colombia and former CIO of Newbridge Networks. Pombo founded TrueContext, formerly known as ProntoForms, in 2001 and led the company to a public listing on the TSX Venture Exchange in 2005. The Kanata-based software company gained customer traction with a low-code mobile solution aimed at field workers, who collect data in industries such as oil and gas. As its CEO, Pombo scaled TrueContext to about 135 employees and more than $20 million in annual revenues over two decades. However, its status as a publicly traded company with low trade volume started to create a “misalignment of objectives” between shareholders focused on short-term returns and those taking a longer-range view of the company’s success. That caused TrueContext executives to consider their alternatives. In this episode of Techopia Live, Ottawa Business Journal publisher Michael Curran speaks with Pombo about what led to the decision to sell TrueContext and what comes next with Battery Ventures. Pombo also talks about the challenges of operating a microcap public company.