Auvik: How Alex Hoff Waited 3 Years for a First Sale, Then Hit $1M MRR by Selling to MSPs

November 2, 2026

TL;DR: Auvik is a Waterloo, Ontario company that makes cloud-based network management software, used by internal IT teams and by managed service providers (MSPs) that run IT for other businesses. It was founded in 2011 by Alex Hoff, Marc Morin and David Yach. As Hoff shared on the show, the company raised capital in 2013, built a polished product, and then did not land its first paying customer until April 2015. Once it stopped selling to small businesses and started selling to MSPs, monthly recurring revenue went from $1K to $1M in about three and a half years. In July 2021, Great Hill Partners made a $250M USD growth investment and took a majority stake. Hoff told the full story on The Product Market Fit Show. The episode aired in August 2024 (Season 3).

A note on sourcing. Anything labeled "as he shared on the show" comes from the interview and has not been independently confirmed. Funding, leadership and company facts labeled with a date were checked against press coverage and company announcements in November 2026.

What does Auvik do?

Auvik gives IT teams a live view of their networks. It discovers the switches, routers, firewalls and other devices on a network, maps how they connect, and monitors them, without a lot of manual setup. Its two core buyers are internal IT departments and MSPs, the outsourced IT firms that manage technology for small and mid-sized businesses.

The original idea was bigger. Hoff and his co-founders wanted to automate network configuration: describe the network you want, and let software write the settings across vendors. They summed up the plan as "see, tell, do." First you see the network, then you tell the system what you want, then it does the work.

The "see" part turned out to be the product people would pay for. MSPs often walk into a new client with no idea what equipment is there. Auvik discovers it.

"You can't manage what you can't see." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

As of July 2021, press coverage of the Great Hill deal said Auvik managed about 4 million devices across roughly 50,000 networks in 50 countries, with more than 200 employees. In 2022, Auvik bought two smaller software companies, Saaslio and Boardgent, adding SaaS discovery and endpoint management. In April 2026, it launched Auvik Aurora, a set of AI agents for IT operations that do root cause analysis on network issues.

Key stat: about 4 million devices on roughly 50,000 networks under management, as of July 2021 (BetaKit).

Who founded Auvik?

Auvik was founded in 2011 by Marc Morin, Alex Hoff and David Yach, according to Auvik's November 2022 announcement of a new CEO.

Hoff studied computer science at the University of Waterloo. As he shared on the show, he then spent about nine years at Sandvine, a Waterloo networking company, joining as a co-op student when it had about 30 people. He moved from writing code into product management and built two successful products there.

Morin had co-founded Sandvine and, before that, PixStream, which sold to Cisco. When Hoff quit with no fixed idea, he asked Morin for advice. Morin offered to build something together instead. Yach, the former CTO of BlackBerry maker RIM, joined as the third co-founder once the idea took shape.

The three split roles early. As Hoff described it, Morin was CEO, Hoff ran product management and the customer-facing work, and Yach led the deep technical build.

Morin led Auvik as CEO until Douglas Murray took over in the fall of 2022. Morin stayed on the board. In March 2023, Hoff moved into the role of Chief Strategy Officer, focused on long-term strategy and technology.

Before they wrote any code, the founders spent a lot of time on what kind of company they wanted. They wanted SaaS from day one, small deal sizes and fast sales cycles, and they did not want one giant customer controlling the roadmap, as they had seen at Sandvine. They also wrote down their values, which became "the Auvik way."

"Products aren't everything, right? It's people who build companies." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

How much has Auvik raised?

Auvik's venture rounds were led by Canadian and US firms, followed by a large private equity deal. Figures below come from press coverage at the time of each deal.

First institutional round, 2013: As Hoff shared on the show, Morin's track record helped the team raise from Celtic House, Rho and BDC. Pablo put the round at about $6M on the show, and Hoff agreed it was roughly right. This figure comes from the episode only.
Series B, August 2017: $15M, led by OpenView, with existing investors Celtic House Venture Partners and Rho Canada Ventures participating (BetaKit).
Growth investment, July 2021: $250M USD ($312M CAD) from Great Hill Partners, which took a majority stake. Some earlier investors were bought out. Celtic House stayed on as an investor (BetaKit, July 2021).

Before the Great Hill deal, Auvik had raised just over $50M CAD in venture funding, according to BetaKit. Other coverage put the figure at $41M, likely in US dollars. No valuation was disclosed for the 2021 deal, so none is given here.

Key stat: a $250M USD majority investment from Great Hill Partners in July 2021, against roughly $50M CAD in prior venture funding (BetaKit).

Why did Auvik take 3 years to make its first sale?

The founders made a deliberate bet. Instead of shipping a rough MVP, they used their funding to build a polished, simple product. Apple had made the case that technology should just work, and they wanted network software to feel the same way.

As Hoff shared on the show, the founders did a lot of talking before building.

"We didn't write a single line of code until we were committed." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

They aimed the product at small and mid-sized businesses. Marketing worked, in the sense that trials poured in. As he shared on the show, roughly 10,000 trials produced about one conversion. The feedback was the same again and again. People liked it, called it "cute," and said they could not afford it. The team built requested features to win early deals. Conversion still did not move.

One customer story made the problem clear. An IT manager at a small law firm loved the product because it let him fix network issues from home. It cost $200 a month. He took it to the partners.

"Partners were like, no, we're not, we're not spending $200 a month. That's what we have you for." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

The lesson, in Hoff's words, was that small businesses had no business doing their own IT. They underpaid for it and undervalued the risk. By then the team had about 30 people and was, as he put it, on the ropes.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, Auvik founded in late 2011, raised in 2013, and closed its first paying customer in April 2015.

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How did selling to MSPs change everything?

At the same moment the small-business market was failing, a new type of buyer kept showing up: managed service providers.

"So we were pretty down, but like literally at the same moment, these MSPs, we're like, what's an MSP? We joked in retrospect now, we couldn't even spell MSP." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

The timing was good. IT resellers were losing margin on hardware and moving to a fixed monthly fee for keeping a client's IT working. Under that model, every hour saved is profit. MSPs ran their business on remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools, which focused on Windows desktops, not networks.

The product barely changed. The buyer did.

MSPs were skeptical at first. They did not believe network discovery could work in minutes, because their tools took heavy manual setup. Hoff answered with a promise that every MSP would learn something new about its network. Reps showed prospects devices they did not know they had.

Messaging was the second fix. Prospects assumed Auvik wanted to replace their RMM. Auvik repositioned as a complement: the RMM handles desktops, Auvik handles the network, and the spend is incremental. The team did not even build Windows desktop management, so the "friend, not foe" message held up. A co-selling partnership with ConnectWise, a major MSP software vendor, gave Auvik access to its events and a seal of approval.

During this stretch, Hoff ran sales and product at the same time. He heard objections on calls, changed the messaging, and had the sales rep test it the same day. As he shared on the show, a $2K-a-month deal felt huge at the time.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, Auvik's MRR went from $1K in April 2015 to $10K in August 2015.

How did Auvik grow from $1K to $1M in MRR?

Auvik celebrates orders of magnitude with a toast of Baby Duck, a cheap sparkling wine someone left in the office fridge. Hoff keeps the bottles. As he shared on the show, the milestones were:

$1K MRR: April 2015
$10K MRR: August 2015
$100K MRR: June 30, 2016
$1M MRR: November 2018, about $12M in annual recurring revenue

The jump from $10K to $100K took about a year and some bridge funding from existing backers. Morin refused to slow down. Hoff called him an entrepreneur's entrepreneur who saw the outcome as binary.

The PMF moment came in an airport security line in Orlando, after Auvik's first ConnectWise trade show. Two attendees in front of the team were talking about "that purple vendor" with the networking product, calling it the coolest thing at the show. They did not know the Auvik team was standing behind them. Then the same reaction repeated at every show.

After that, the team turned sales into a formula.

"We took the predictable revenue model and we took it to heart." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

Morin, an engineer, wanted to engineer sales: how many leads, how many business development reps, how much demand generation spend. Money went in at the top and closed deals came out the bottom, on top of the MSP market's own growth. When Pablo asked if Auvik had hit the next order of magnitude, $10M a month, Hoff said not yet.

Key stat: as he shared on the show, $1K to $1M in MRR took about 3.5 years, a 1,000x increase.

Key lessons from Alex's playbook

1. Agree on the company before the product. Hoff and Morin settled culture, roles, ambition and business model before picking an idea. Those constraints, like SaaS only and no giant customers, filtered out ideas fast. For more on this, see startup values at the early stage. 2. Change the buyer before you change the product. Auvik's product worked. Small businesses just would not pay for it. MSPs, whose margins depend on saving time, would. If users love it but buyers will not pay, look at who else feels the pain. Compare the tradeoffs in SMB vs enterprise and finding PMF after a pivot. 3. Position against no one. Framing Auvik as a complement to the RMM, not a replacement, turned a switching decision into an add-on purchase. 4. Shorten the feedback loop. Hoff ran sales and product together, so objections became messaging changes the same day. See founder-led sales for how other founders do this. 5. Be bold, and do one thing. His main advice is to commit fully, kill what is not working, and stay single-threaded until it works.

"Like we killed selling it to IT market. Don't spend your years trying to tinker like just go." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

"Do one thing, do it well, then move on to like be single threaded. Do one thing really, really well." — Alex Hoff, Auvik

Listen to the full interview: He took 3 years to make his 1st sale, then grew 1000x to $10M ARR 3 years later.

FAQ: Auvik

Q: What is Auvik? A: Auvik is a Waterloo, Ontario software company that makes cloud-based network management tools. It discovers, maps and monitors network devices for internal IT teams and managed service providers. In April 2026, it launched Auvik Aurora, a set of AI agents for IT operations.

Q: Who founded Auvik, and who is the CEO? A: Auvik was founded in 2011 by Marc Morin, Alex Hoff and David Yach. Morin was the first CEO. Douglas Murray became CEO in the fall of 2022, and Morin stayed on the board. Hoff became Chief Strategy Officer in March 2023.

Q: How much funding has Auvik raised? A: Auvik raised just over $50M CAD in venture funding before 2021, including a $15M Series B led by OpenView in August 2017. In July 2021, Great Hill Partners made a $250M USD ($312M CAD) investment and took a majority stake. No valuation was disclosed.

Q: Who are Auvik's investors? A: Great Hill Partners is the majority owner since July 2021. Earlier investors included OpenView, Celtic House Venture Partners, Rho Canada Ventures and BDC Capital. Celtic House stayed on as an investor after the Great Hill deal.

Q: How big is Auvik? A: As of July 2021, Auvik had more than 200 employees and managed about 4 million devices across roughly 50,000 networks in 50 countries, according to BetaKit. As Hoff shared on the show, it passed $1M in monthly recurring revenue in November 2018.

Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story

Alex Hoff, Auvik — co-founder who left Sandvine with six months of runway, spent three years finding a first customer, and grew Auvik's MRR 1,000x after switching from small businesses to MSPs.