Startup Q&A: Quicket Solutions

Christiaan Burner and Akshay Singh are the cofounders of Quicket Solutions, which delivers a cloud-based workflow automation, storage, and analytics platform for public sector organizations. Over 100 government agencies that collectively serve millions of people utilize Quicket to reduce manual data entry, enable real-time collaboration, automate services for residents and visitors, and eliminate costs associated with managing server infrastructure.

Read on to learn more about Quicket and the team!

— In a single sentence, what does Quicket do?

Quicket Solutions delivers a cloud-based workflow automation, storage, and analytics platform for public sector organizations that tackles core functions including justice & public safety, finance, community development, licensing & permitting, and more.

— How did Quicket come to be? What was the problem you found and the ‘aha’ moment?

Christiaan Burner and Akshay Singh met while attending the University of Illinois. Their prior experience working with government enabled them to see up close how agencies were “drowning” in data with paper-based workflows and antiquated software. Christiaan and Akshay realized that there was an opportunity to develop a SaaS big-data platform that eliminated paperwork and data silos that could enable automation and improve collaboration and analytics.

— What sets Quicket apart in the market?

Quicket provides the only flexible SaaS platform that manages diverse government workflows/regulations while significantly reducing engineering resources required for implementations. Customers are most excited by the elimination of upfront costs and immediate positive ROI plus a dramatically improved user experience. The combination of proprietary tech and elimination of upfront costs significantly compresses the sales cycle and enables agencies to ‘sole source’ rather than conduct a lengthy RFP process in most circumstances.

— What milestone are you most proud of so far?

Every new customer is an exciting milestone for the company. Since our standard contract is 5 years, a government agency selecting Quicket results in a long-lasting partnership that will fundamentally change how government provides services to its residents for years to come. It’s truly a privilege to be trusted to manage the workflows and data of core government functions that collectively serve millions of people.

— Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?

Quicket has received funding from industry executives and family offices and is seeking it’s first institutional partner for its Series A-2.

— What KPIs are you tracking that you think will lead to revenue generation/growth?

With a powerful ecosystem consisting of multiple modules of the Platform available, Quicket has a ‘land-and-expand’ strategy. We are seeing substantial growth both with new customers and with existing customers significantly expanding the scope of their contracts.

As the company develops more modules and as we tackle larger and larger agencies, average ARR is also trending significantly upwards. With a powerful Platform ecosystem across platform modules Finally, we have had almost a 100% retention rate, resulting in strong references driving additional growth. We have also had zero cancellations or delays in payments as a result of COVID-19.

— How do you build and develop talent?

Beyond our initial team from the University of Illinois, which is one of the best engineering programs in the Country, Quicket worked closely with a recruiting firm to identify seasoned engineering talent with experience tackling large-scale cloud-implementations, enterprise-wide software deployments, and more. In addition, our sales team was recruited from leading enterprise-SaaS companies. Our team loves Quicket because of how our product directly improves our communities by making government services more accessible, equitable, efficient, and transparent.

— What are the biggest challenges for the team?

Deploying the first several customers is entirely different than building scalable technology. As the company has grown, we have ensured that we have built a highly-scalable and flexible solution to reduce the risks with accumulating tech debt. We have ensured that our mission-critical applications are highly reliable and secure, as government counts on us 24/7/365.

— What’s been the biggest success for the team? How did you celebrate?

Upsell wins oftentimes feel like the biggest wins because its an existing customer coming back to the company and expressing their total satisfaction with their existing module(s) that have been purchased and wanting to add more to drive more value. We have one customer in particular that has added multiple additional contracts with an ARR now above $100k.

We celebrate through company-wide recognition of those the contributed to the deal, including the selling and deployment.

— What’s something you’re constantly thinking about?

State and local government is the second largest aspect of the US economy yet receives minimal attention from institutional investors. Quicket has proven that it can significantly reduce the typically lengthy sales cycle and implementations with an innovative business model and proprietary tech.

— What advice would you give to other founders?

“Government is too complicated.” Oftentimes the most valuable companies are able to simplify and standardize complex processes. Quicket’s scalable platform has proven that it can be sold and deployed faster than any company in space and the market is large enough for a new ‘giant’ to be the global trusted leader for managing government software and infrastructure.

— Have you been or are you part of a corporate startup program or accelerator? If so, which ones and what have been the benefits?

Quicket was a graduate of the EnterpriseWorks incubator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Quicket participated in the program for two years before moving to Chicago, IL.