Having raised US$2 million late last year, janitorial software producer Swept is now beefing up its team and aiming to hire just the right staff.

And the Halifax-based company is also doing its best to make sure the hires take place in Atlantic Canada.

Matt Cooper, the COO and co-founder of Swept, told about 40 Dalhousie University students and entrepreneurs at Launch Dal’s Fireside Chat last week of Swept’s growth since it raised the funding. And he emphasized the importance of proper hiring and choosing the right team members for an early-stage company.

In October, with help from venture capital firms iNovia and Afore Capital, Swept closed a US$2 million round of funding and set out a plan to increase its staff to about 20 members.

“We’re using that equity to hire more director roles and hiring people who are way smarter than Mike and I,” said Cooper in an interview after the chat. He says he and his co-founder, CEO Michael Brown, are trying to hire within the region.

“We spent a lot of time attracting and building here — we very intentionally spent our time and set our sights on Atlantic Canada.”

Since the October raise, Swept has taken on five new employees and is still looking for the right people to fill development, sales, marketing and director roles.

“We’re working with our heads down to build the plan that we set out (and) our plan should be complete in the next month,” said Cooper, who added the company has no immediate plans to raise fresh capital.

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Swept creates software for the commercial cleaning industry, and its tech helps connect cleaners with their bosses and customers, letting the employer check in with their cleaners on the job.

Cooper says the problems in the cleaning industry are systemic. Employees, especially those who work night shifts, often feel overlooked and sometimes are not given clear instructions for their shift, leading to a high turnover rate in the industry.

According to Cooper, solving the cleaning industry’s retention problem wasn’t Swept’s original business plan. What started as a cleaning company morphed into janitorial software development while going through Propel ICT’s accelerator program. Cooper says good research and “self-awareness” led to that pivot.

“If you don’t do the research, you’ll end up creating something nobody needs,” he told the crowd. “The better you know yourself, the easier it will be to find someone to complement that.”

The fireside chats are part of Launch Dal’s Collide program. It aims to bring in graduates of the program to talk about their successes and, more importantly, their failures in the business world. Swept is not a graduate of Dal’s Collide program but organizers made an exception.

“Normally we keep it in Dalhousie but I’ve been seeing Swept in the news or on Career Beacon, so obviously they’re hiring and they’re growing so we reached out,” said Sarah MacLellan, the program co-ordinator for Launch Dal. She was pleased that Cooper gave a real, honest talk about Swept’s growth.

“We need to bring in people who talk about all of their journey, the good and the bad, not just meeting the milestones.”

Disclosure: Dalhousie University is a client of Entrevestor.