We are excited to announce our investment into Submarine, a platform for building flexible commerce experiences.
Founder Gavin Ballard has been involved in the ecommerce ecosystem for a decade and has a global reputation for deep knowledge of the Shopify Plus platform. As the CEO of Disco Labs, one of the world’s leading Shopify Plus Partner Agencies, Ballard has a decade of experience in the ecosystem and wrote the literal book on development for Shopify. He has worked on some of the most complex problems for large merchants, including solving architectural challenges for ecommerce behemoths JB Hi-Fi, Youfoodz, and Brooklinen.
A flexible platform
Submarine was originally built by the Disco Labs team as the first solution for bespoke payment flows on Shopify – subscriptions, presales, crowdfunding, upselling and stored cards. A platform with a flexible base, Submarine offers numerous APIs and integration points with the ability to integrate both out-of-the-box and custom payment processors, as well as handle complex customer requirements and business rules
The unique and definable competitive advantage Submarine has is due to the unparalleled access to Shopify gained through the founder. Ballard has successfully built industry leading custom software and an integrations agency with high quality staff.
The long term vision for Submarine is to empower large merchants to build truly innovative and tailored commerce experiences for their customers, regardless of platform or complexity. The product is battle-hardened and is an integral part of operations for Hasbro, Stamps.com and Lenox, some of Shopify’s largest Plus merchants.
Sprint’s investment team’s analysis highlighted that Submarine has genuine and compelling traction with substantial monthly recurring revenue (MRR) with dozens of live merchants and nine figures in annual GMV being processed through the platform.
Alignment with Sprint
Llew Jury, Sprint Ventures’ Managing Partner was impressed by Submarine’s focus on innovation and the ability of the team to deliver substantial productivity gains and the customer centric approach.
“Submarine is customer obsessed. Working closely with merchants allows Submarine to onboard and retain a solid merchant base.
“Sprint was built on the belief that extraordinary founders can build a better future, and Gavin is the epitome of that vision. Using his extensive knowledge and network he provides an innovative solution to bridge reluctant merchants and Shopify. With our strong investing values, we are thrilled to invest in their continued growth.”
Founder Gavin Ballard immediately saw the value in working with Sprint Ventures.
“Sprint has a deep understanding of both the ecommerce and agency space, which is where our platform has grown up, so the opportunity to partner with them was one we wanted to grab from the get-go.
They’re also on board with our core values and our belief that pairing a people-first company approach with a deep focus on product and developer experience results in better outcomes for everyone. We’re excited to keep working with them as we build out the next iteration of our platform and expand into new regions, verticals, and product ranges.”
Submarine’s 5 Phase rollout will validate, commit, grow, expand and mature the platform and Sprint’s lead investment in the seed round will allow the business to go all-in and convert great opportunities.
