Having recently pivoted to expand its scope, 2nd Act Innovations of Halifax has hired two C-level executives in Silicon Valley to lead its sales and engineering efforts and help to raise a $5 million round of venture capital financing.

Reza Kazemipour has joined as Chief Executive Officer and Guillaume Oget as Chief Technology Officer, and together they will join a four-member executive team with Co-Founders Andrew Doyle and Peter Hickey. Kazemipour and Oget will both be based in the San Francisco area, while Doyle and Hickey back home in Halifax will continue as board members and retain control of the company.

In an interview, Doyle said the company plans to continue to locate its development team in Halifax, and that it now plans to place special emphasis on building up sales teams in both San Francisco and Halifax.

“The product is in good shape,” said Doyle in an interview Tuesday. “Of course we’ll continue to develop it, but what we want is to get it out and into customers’ hands.”

The company began two years ago by developing its Oris4 software to help large companies organize and retrieve internal files, and it gained some traction with sales in the U.S. However, Doyle said feedback from customers convinced 2nd Act that it had to broaden the reach of its retrieval capabilities.

In November, the company pivoted so Oris4 now provides a cloud-based solution that allows members of organizations to quickly and easily find documents across a range of online tools, such as dropbox or Google Drive, as well as in internal systems.

“The reception has been fantastic, and not just from end-users but also from IT managers,” said Doyle.

Now the focus is on gaining more traction with the sales effort, which is why the company has brought in Kazemipour. He has spent more than 20 years in sales, strategy and business leadership roles in the software industry in Silicon Valley, with a handful of exits, including the sale of his company FAST to Microsoft.

"What really got me excited about Oris4 is that they take care of a real problem that many of us have –access and findability of content in the cloud,” said Kazemipour in a statement. “Oris4 is the best answer I've seen to simplify search and allow you to stitch together all of your sources in one place.”

Oget spent 15 years at Hewlett-Packard, leading technology teams in areas including mobility, security and cloud computing. He was recently Consulting Director for Enterprise Mobility.

As well as heading sales, Kazemipour will lead the effort to close the $5 million funding round. Doyle said the company now has $1.35 million in commitments from existing investors and it is in talks with other potential investors in California and Canada, some of whom are conducting due diligence.

Last year, 2nd Act raised $1.1 million in capital, including equity investments worth a total of $500,000 from GrowthWorks Atlantic and Innovacorp, and a $350,000 loan from Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.