A Little Man Power Goes a Long Way

John GivensFive years ago, John Givens, BA’95, and James Gibbins created the little software company that could. They envisioned that their unheard of Gotacopy Inc. would one day work alongside the big name computer giants to revolutionize the way government, educational institutions and venture enterprises approached the printing process.

“The old boy’s school of Xerox, IBM, and Canon are like the Titanic because they are so entrenched with their customers. When we rowed up beside them in our two-man dinghy, knocked on the hull to ask if anyone needed help, they shouted overboard ‘What’s that kids? We can’t hear you!’” recalls Gibbins, founder, CEO, and president of Gotacopy.

What Gotacopy was offering them was “printelligence solutions” — a print tracking program that allows organizations to manage, bill, account for, reduce, and recover costs of printing, and direct print jobs to a local printer or a print facility.

It didn’t take long before the old boys heard the kids of Gotacopy loud and clear based on their product performance. Printelligence users were seeing their printing costs cut in half, and they spread the word. Today, some of the pair’s customers include the Canadian Forces Department of Defence, NAIT, SAIT, the University of Lethbridge, and Rogers Video. In 2004, Gibbins and Givens (who is the vice president, sales and marketing) were voted best in class by investors and venture capital firms across Canada and the U.S. at the Banff Venture Forum.

It didn’t take long before those “Titanic” companies jumped on board with Gotacopy to deliver printelligence solutions to their customers and recognize that the Alberta-based print management software company has changed the landscape for printer manufacturers, distributors and users.

The growth of Gotacopy has been exponential. In the past two years, their customer base has grown tenfold from 5,000 to 50,000. One area that hasn’t seen any growth is the company’s employment base – it’s still run by the two-man team from their home offices in Calgary and Edmonton. Sure, they can’t take part in corporate baseball or golf tournaments, but that doesn’t seem to bother them one bit. Gibbins and Givens joke that it just means they have more in the slush fund to go towards their bi-monthly “company retreat” at the local pub.

By Sally Jade Powis