London-based startup Keel has raised $6 million seed funding by developing a user-friendly platform for building custom operational software aimed at growing tech-enabled businesses. 

Operations face a vast gulf between no-code and ERP solutions. When scrappy ops teams outgrow their original spreadsheets and no-code operations stack, they typically find there’s nowhere to go except a behemoth ERP. Building from scratch is often not viable, since engineering resources aren’t prioritised to solve operational problems. 

Meanwhile, existing platforms offered by companies like Oracle, SAP, and NetSuite are one-size-fits-all proprietary software with limited options for customisation. This all-or-nothing approach requires lengthy and costly implementation periods. Businesses end up with rigid systems and cumbersome tools that limit productivity and prevent teams from reacting to new challenges. 

Keel has found a way to meld existing tools that work well and those who 

Keel was founded in 2022 by Benoit Machefer, Tom Frew and Jon Bretman, who directly experienced the frustration of being underserved by off-the-shelf software whilst at Echo (Europe’s fastest-growing online pharmacy).

The trio realised that off-the-shelf tools couldn’t solve the challenges the regulated and uncharted pharmacy world presented. They built tools within its operational stack that enabled them to safely scale 4X in 4 months during the Covid-19 pandemic, to $80 million revenue.  

Following the company’s successful acquisition, they took their enthusiasm for building effective operational tools to the market, and Keel was born. 

I spoke to Benoit Machefer, co-founder and CEO, to learn more.

According to Machefer:

“Many companies are still operating behind a ton of spreadsheets or using off-the-shelf tools that serve them for 80 percent of their use cases. 

However, beyond that, 20 percent of tasks remain that require you to build a tonne of work around tech, meaning you spend most of your time fixing tools that keep breaking rather than actually doing the value-added work.”

Macheferoffers the example of stock ordering and inventory management for medication at scale, which wasn’t solved by any off-the-shelf options. 

“Like all good ops, we started with a bunch of spreadsheets and a bit of app script, but it became clear that this wouldn’t offer the robustness, security and level of integration we needed.

We looked for a platform that we could build upon, but it didn’t exist, so the only option was to assemble an ops engineering team of backend and frontend developers.”

But most companies can’t afford to self-build, and most engineers want to focus on customer-facing tech, not internal tools. 

“We founded Keel because businesses are changing, and contemporary companies need to own their own operations software and tools. We see a future where many companies never need a traditional ERP, and instead, technically-minded operators can be the owners of their ops stack.”

“We speak to operators every day who are frustrated they can’t get access to engineering time, and engineers who hate working on ops software that’s not designed for development. Keel can bring ops and engineering together like we haven’t seen before.” 

With Keel, operators have the full context of the challenges specific to their business. They pick up Keel, and they are able to start building things and upskilling themselves towards software development as well as using “what are effectively engineering best practices to build very robust and relevant systems that go beyond legacy ERP.”

The company has gained a lot of traction in physical opeations, such as inventory management in logistics, shift management, and driver payroll. 

Early customer HIVED first used the platform to build driver shift management and are now looking at adding finance, facilities management, and payroll functions, all developed by one ops team member. 

According to Murvah Iqbal, CEO of HIVED:

“The best thing about Keel is that a member of our ops team has been able to develop the system themselves, so the person closest to the problem also owns the solution.” 

Further, Machefer stresses that Keel isn’t trying to force change management on time-poor teams: 

“You don’t necessarily want all of your team to have to do change management and move away from all the tools they are using well.”

Instead, Keel allows customers to sequentially adopt, tackling one pain point at a time, while retaining the third-party software that still works for them, separating them from the restrictive “all-in-one” offer of many ERPs. 

The platform offers multiple advantages: it comprises a backend engine, API-first solutions, and auto-generated admin tools. It’s open-source and has exceptional developer experience, so it’s easy for technical operators to get started and for engineers to provide support when needed later. 

Earlybird and LocalGlobe led the funding. Earlybird Partner Dr Andre Retterath comments:

“We saw something extraordinary in this team and the giant market they are tackling with a customisable solution.

In order to disrupt this market with a more operationally-minded product, you need a team who built and scaled ops-centric organisations themselves, which we found in Benoit, Tom, and Jon. We are proud to have backed them since day 1.”

The fundraise has helped build and develop the platform centred on user experience. The team is now bringing Keel to a wider audience of businesses that share their ambition to avoid the headaches of an ERP implementation in the future.

Lead image: Keel. Photo: uncredited.