Andrew Waitman learned about Assent in a boxing gym. He was in his forties, a former chief executive of the Ottawa tech firm Pythian, and he had taken up the sport late. There he met Matt Whitteker, a fellow boxing enthusiast who, with Rob Imbeault, had started a small compliance software company in 2005 and organised the Fight for the Cure charity boxing matches on the side.
Waitman left Pythian in August 2014. Whitteker invited him to look at Assent, at first as a volunteer. Within a short time Waitman was the chief executive. He later told the Ottawa Business Journal that Whitteker was the reason Assent exists.
Michael Southworth became CEO that May, and Waitman moved to executive chairman.
That detail rarely makes the funding headlines, but it explains the place. Assent's Ottawa office has a full-size boxing ring in it. The company uses it as a stage for announcements and all-hands meetings, not for settling arguments.
Waitman was not new to engineering or to building companies. He had an electrical engineering degree from Waterloo, class of 1987. What he found at Assent was a product with unusual timing. Manufacturers were being asked by regulators and their own customers to prove where raw materials came from, and whether suppliers met rules on human rights, health and safety. Doing that by spreadsheet and email was misery. Assent sold software that collected the answers from suppliers.
What almost nobody expected was how fast that boring work would pay. By the middle of the 2010s the company had about 25 employees and clients that included more than 30 percent of S&P 500 product companies, with contracts often in the range of C$50,000 to C$100,000 a year. The business could not keep growing organically at the pace those customers needed, so it took a C$20 million equity investment and planned to go from 165 people to 265.
The bigger money came later. In early 2022 Vista Equity Partners led a US$350 million deal that valued Assent above US$1 billion, one of the largest rounds in Canadian software history. Much of it bought out earlier shareholders. By June 2024 recurring revenue had passed US$100 million, and in 2025 Vista raised its stake at a reported valuation near US$1.3 billion. Assent said it had not been acquired. Michael Southworth became CEO that May, and Waitman moved to executive chairman.
There is a founder lesson here that does not appear in any pitch deck. Assent's second act began with an unforced introduction in a gym, a volunteer first look, and a founder willing to hand over the wheel. The best outside CEO can arrive through a friendship, if you are willing to ask.