“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear

Organizations do not rise to the level of their strategies; they fall to the level of their systems. Most strategic initiatives at large organizations fail. And it’s because the underlying systems to support those strategies don’t work.

This is the problem Bastin, the founder of Profit, is solving. Profit helps companies bridge the gap between business strategy and execution. It’s a strategy execution platform that focuses on improving both business and individual performance.

Like many startup stories, Profit was born from the founder’s struggle and desire to solve his pain points. At this last company Bastin felt the need for a strategy execution tool. He tried to solve it by using standard solutions like spreadsheets and presentations but quickly realized these were not the best tools for the job. So he built an app, which later spun out and launched as Profit.

When I first met him, Profit was operating in bootstrap mode, was profitable, and had such a strong product and inbound motion that they had acquired almost 50 of the Fortune 500 as customers solely through inbound efforts.

“A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” – Alan Kay

A change in product strategy is worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, in TAM. Profit is an OKR-centric strategy execution platform. A popular opinion is that the OKR market is overcrowded. However, founders are not in the business of popular opinions; they are in the business of deep insights and differentiating signals from noise. A founder with deep insight sees a white space and large opportunity where others get caught in the noise and miss the opportunity.

Though the OKR methodology is 50 years old, its recent popularity has led to the birth of many solutions. Every product management, task management, and performance management tool claims to do OKRs. When Bastin looked at the existing solutions, he noticed that these solutions lacked focus.

Existing solutions had morphed into individual performance tools rather than focusing on the core thesis of OKRs, which is business performance.

As Bastin shared with me during our initial meeting, “The problem with them is they started with something else and then they added OKRs. They think that you can set up a goal and then set up some key results, and that’s OKRs. Whereas it’s actually not that. The whole OKR methodology involves a lot of things, including a big focus on planning and execution. People who are seriously practicing OKRs will never go for any of these tools.”

Unlike others who added OKRs as an afterthought, Bastin built Profit as an OKR-centric strategy execution platform. Profit started with OKRs and expanded its capabilities to include comprehensive project and task management, as well as employee performance management.

It offers executives real-time insights into strategy execution and increases employee productivity by automating check-ins through integrations with tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Tableau, and many others. Bastin calls this “package tracking,” where you can look at the KPIs and the initiatives influencing the KPIs all in one place.

And because of its highly flexible and configurable nature, Profit is easier for businesses to adopt into their regular workflow. Rather than becoming a change management problem, it seamlessly integrates, which is a major challenge when it comes to adoption at enterprises.

Bastin’s deep insights into the deficiencies of existing OKR tools and his commitment to building a comprehensive, OKR-centric strategy execution platform position Profit as a leader in a growing market. With over 500 customers across 25 countries, Profit has demonstrated its ability to build a large global company. We are proud to back Profit on their mission to revolutionize how organizations achieve and track their strategic goals.