Keel

If you're new here, let us introduce ourselves... 👋🏻 🙋🏻♂️ Keel is what happens when three people need to build and scale an operations business with no help from off-the-shelf tooling. Before we founded Keel in 2021, we worked at Echo, Europe’s fastest growing online pharmacy that was later acquired by Pharmacy2U Ltd. As CEO, CTO and Head of Product, we worked across technology and physical operations shipping 50k medicines to 600k customers daily. When we left, the business had grown to £100m annual revenue. 💸 Through this journey, we built a ton of custom software to run our operations. We hadn’t intended to, but we had no choice. Off-the-shelf was inflexible, and we just needed to get things done! By building the tools ourselves, we realised that custom software massively raises the quality of ops, and also that most ops teams won’t ever have access to their own purpose-built tools. 👉🏻 That’s why we built Keel. Keel offers operators all the benefits of custom software, without having a team of engineers to build it all for you. Engineers typically focus on revenue-generating activities, and we want ops teams to be able to deliver top quality output, time and again, through access to exceptional tooling. 🚀 🌉 Keel bridges the gap between ops and eng. It’s accessible enough that an ops person can get all the insights and usable tools they need from it, but it’s built on engineering best practices so developers can enjoy extending it to meet the needs of your growing company. Whether you’re managing stock ordering or reimbursing expenses, there are in-built internal tools that help you do common processes out-of-the-box, and connecting to your other tech is seamless. And then it’s fully flexible, meaning your engineers can make it fit exactly your process and solve your exact problem, with no compromises and no rebuilding later. 🤝🏻 Our full service onboarding with our highly experienced team will get you set up and feeling confident, meaning you can be sure you’ve got the solution you need before you commit. Chat to us now! #Operations #InternalTools #LowCode

🎉 Happy New Year to friends, colleagues and supporters, old and new. I've written a few reflections on what I've learnt this year, from the successes to the things I hope to change in 2025. Thank you from all of us at Keel for being part of the journey so far. I can't wait to see what the new year will bring 🚀 https://lnkd.in/eJdtmQya

🎄 Merry Christmas from all of us at Keel! A huge thank you to all of our customers this year, new and old 🙏🏻 Wishing all our followers and friends a peaceful, happy festive period, however you celebrate ❄️ From Team Keel: Benoit Machefer, Tom Frew, Jon Bretman, Bobbi Nicholson, Dave New, Radu Gruia, Louisa Salt, George Cherry, Jay Meistrich 💛

“Our contractors take photos on site, upload them to their CRM, download them again, email them to us, then we manually upload them to our system." 🤯 🗣️ This is how a fast-growing solar company described their installation process to us recently. Every single job requires multiple manual hand-offs, with data being downloaded and uploaded between systems. ♻️ The most interesting part? Their team has become so used to this process that it seems normal. They've built impressive workarounds - detailed checklists, multiple validation steps, careful documentation. ☑️ But all that effort spent on manual processes is effort not spent on growing the business, improving customer experience, or innovating on their core offering. ❓ When did we accept this as normal? And more importantly, how much is it really costing us? 👀 Read Benoit Machefer's thoughts on breaking free from manual workflows: (link in comments) #ManualProcesses #Automation #Startups #FounderInsights

“Our contractors take photos on site, upload them to their CRM, download them again, email them to us, then we manually upload them to our system." 🤯 🗣️ This is how a fast-growing solar company described their installation process to us recently. Every single job requires multiple manual hand-offs, with data being downloaded and uploaded between systems. ♻️ The most interesting part? Their team has become so used to this process that it seems normal. They've built impressive workarounds - detailed checklists, multiple validation steps, careful documentation. ☑️ But all that effort spent on manual processes is effort not spent on growing the business, improving customer experience, or innovating on their core offering. ❓ When did we accept this as normal? And more importantly, how much is it really costing us? 👀 Read Benoit Machefer's thoughts on breaking free from manual workflows: (link in comments) #ManualProcesses #Automation #Startups #FounderInsights

📈 Is your business hitting that awkward growth phase where your tools are starting to break? We've all been there - spreadsheets are multiplying, team members are creating "unofficial" workarounds, and data is being copied between systems more times than you can count. These aren't just annoyances. They're warning signs that your operational tools aren't keeping up with your success. In our latest blog post, we break down: 👉🏻 The telltale signs your systems need attention 👉🏻 Real examples from companies hitting €1B+ revenue 👉🏻 Practical steps you can take before things get critical Read the full article 👉🏻 (link in comments) #Operations #ScaleUp #BusinessGrowth #OperationalExcellence

❓ Ever feel like you're running a tech support desk for your own tools? You're not alone. Here's what we're hearing from fast-growing companies: 🗣️ "We have the data in 5 different systems, so we're copying and pasting between them all day." 🗣️ "Our team is spending more time managing tools than managing the business." 🗣️ "We know there's a better way, but traditional ERPs are too rigid and building from scratch seems impossible." Sound familiar? That's because every scaling company hits this wall. Your scrappy tools got you here, but now they're holding you back 🚀 This is exactly why we built Keel. We've been there - when we scaled LloydsDirect part of Pharmacy2U from £15M to £60M in four months during COVID, we learned first-hand that operational agility is everything. Keel gives you the flexibility of custom-built tools without the engineering overhead. Keep what works, replace what doesn't, and build the missing pieces - all on one platform that grows with you 🌱 Modern businesses deserve better than being forced to adapt to their tools. Your tools should adapt to you. #OperationalExcellence #StartupGrowth #TechScaleups

❓ When was the last time your ops team said "our tools just work"? If you're growing fast, probably never. And that's okay. Because standard tools are built for standard businesses. But you're not building a standard business. You're building something new. 👉🏻 Something that doesn't fit in pre-built boxes. 👉🏻 Something that needs tools as unique as your vision. Stop fighting your growth. 🚀 Start building operations that scale with you, not against you, with Keel

🙋♀️ 5 signs you've outgrown your operational tools: 1. Your team spends more time working around tools than with them 2. Your data lives in 5+ different systems that don't talk to each other 3. Simple changes require complex workarounds 4. Your processes depend on tribal knowledge 5. You're saying no to opportunities because your tools can't handle them. Sound familiar? You're not alone 👯 Every fast-growing company hits this wall. It's not a setback - it's a milestone. Keel helps companies break through the wall, empowering you to keep the tools you love and build out the gaps. Replace the workarounds with robust tools that grow with you 📈

👋🏻 Meet our founders! 👋🏻 Benoit Machefer, Tom Frew and Jon Bretman share a passion for empowering operations teams with their very own custom, flexible, and secure systems, without the cost of building from scratch. Why us? 💊 Our founders met whilst growing Echo (now LloydsDirect part of Pharmacy2U) to $130m revenue during the toughest of times, the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, they saw first-hand the limitations of trying to scale and innovate with only the help of narrow off-the-shelf SaaS tools. Their only choice was to self-build, a powerful advantage that most companies can’t access. 🙌🏻 Now, Keel is offering a ground-breaking new solution for critical business processes: custom, flexible operations systems without the cost of building from scratch. 👇🏻 Read all about our $6m fundraising news below! (Link in comments) 🎉 #FounderStories #Startup #Introducing #Fundraise