Halifax’s Proposify made a profit last year for the first time since 2018, with CEO Kyle Racki and his team now in “build mode” with a suite of updated product offerings.

In an interview Friday, Racki said a new version of his company’s software, currently in beta and stylized as Proposify 3, represents a dramatic rework of the platform. Proposify also released a public API, or application programming interface, earlier this year, and is preparing to launch a tool for automating some tasks.

“We’ve been making a lot of investments in our product, and we want to realize the returns on that over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Racki. “We’re back in build mode right now in terms of the Proposify rebuild, getting customers adopting that.

“We feel confident that’s going to translate into revenue growth over the next year.”

The API allows companies to customize how their staff interact with the software and more easily integrate it with their existing technology stacks. The forthcoming automation tool will include its own graphical interface and allow users to instruct the software to perform specific actions based on pre-defined triggers.

The automated tasks can be performed within Proposify or with other software via the API. For example, a user might direct Proposify to generate a contract based on a template and notify signatories.

“Traditionally there would be no way to do that within our software,” said Racki. “We’d have to build that specific to their use case. Whereas this is more like a flexible builder where you can just create your own automation.”

Launched in 2013 by Racki and Co-Founder Kevin Springer, Proposify’s software simplifies the process of writing proposals in the cloud with online design templates that can be customized with text, images, videos and charts, as well as including document sharing and e-signing features.

At Entrevestor Live last year, Rickie and COO Kathy Doucette told the story of how they rightsized the company entering the pandemic, a move that laid the groundwork for last year’s profitability.

In 2021, Proposify raised $5 million, and by January of the following year, the company had more than 10,000 clients, employing about 110 people at its peak headcount. Today, Racki leads a team of 62 people, and while he does expect to do some hiring to support Proposify’s various new product rollouts, this time the business will be expanding at a more judicious rate.

Achieving real growth last year was also a more significant feat because Proposify’s revenue growth has weakened in the last couple years. The role of Proposify 3, if all goes according to plan, will be to help change that.

 “We’ve been relatively flat over the last couple of years,” said Racki, adding the business is stable enough to forego raising capital for the moment. “We’re making investments in product and growth to get where we need to be.

“It’s a good place to be in to not have to worry as much about runway and burn.”