Who wants to be acquired?

When you start a technology company that’s attracted investment there’s always a clear goal. At some point, you’d like the business to be acquired.

For most, this never happens. For the lucky few that do manage to reach this key milestone, it is a strange and reflective experience. I can tell you this as the company I co-founded with John Straw has been bought by ScribbleLive.

Back in 2009 Linkdex had a dream of making the best making the best, most accurate and insightful backlink data in the world available to the SEO profession. We built it and hoped the sales would come. They didn’t. We had made more than a few mistakes, and in the process of failing, had learnt what the market actually wanted. We just had to build it.

Moon, Mars, Stars

A personal and business relationship that was transformational was with Laurence John, who was at Amadeus. Laurence gave us more time than was reasonable to expect. But his mentorship allowed us to set our sights high, the stars. But more importantly he gave us a high level map of how to get there, by slingshotting around strategic staging posts, the moon and mars.

When we re-entered the market we did so as a $49 competitor to Moz and other SEO tools; but had the intention to quickly move into the enterprise space. Through a lot of hard work and self-made luck we eventually built the product that the enterprise market wanted, and started to get traction amongst agencies and then in-house teams.

As the months rolled into years we continued to release product every two weeks, kept balancing the needs of what customers said they wanted and data and feature that were new and innovative. This balancing act helped us win awards, grow our staff and client base, and continue to invest. The moon had been reached.

But there was a cost for the technical growth. It’s often called technical debt. Our velocity was slowing and we needed to check the product strategy was right, as it wasn’t just the product that was evolving. The profession was as well. So we re-imagined the UI / UX and re-wrote most code to create a vehicle fit for a trip to Mars. Version 2 of Linkdex was launched in February this year.

Fast-forward to today and SEO is now more grown up than ever, and has become a channel where having the right content is central to being a competitive business.

The good news is that for over two years Linkdex had been strategically investing in this trend towards SEO and Content Marketing becoming closely aligned. This strategy is apparent in the software we’ve released and the innovations we’re releasing in the very near future. 

Our progress naturally attracted attention and when we met the ScribbleLive team it was obvious there was a big synergy for our clients and the agencies and brands we would like to become clients. And for what it’s worth we really liked them and that mattered. They were good guys with a great product who were also on a very similar mission. So a deal was done and we were delighted to be bought and join forces. Together we can easily get to the stars.

Tech companies are all about people

Which leaves me with one last thing to do today. I’d like to say a very special thank you to all of those that have helped on the journey. There are lots of amazing people responsible for getting Linkdex to this point. Many of whom I now call friends.

Our clients are often found saying that they did not just buy the product for its features, they also bought the people, who they are, what they say and do.

I don't like calling out individuals because it has always been a team game. However I do need to say an extra special thank you to a few: 

• John Straw for inspiring investors like the amazing Amadeus and getting us up and running. A true visionary with more energy than any person I've ever met.
• Laurence John for asking and helping me to find gears I was yet to discover. For becoming a dear friend and for continue to inspire me by what you're achieving with Ctrlio.
• Steve Brown for guiding our early years and investing personally in the dream.
• Mark Smith for being the CEO at the helm during amazing and often challenging growth.
• Collette Easton for doing more travel miles and demonstrations than any human should be expected to do, and doing those transformational deals.
• Martin Armstrong our CTO, for inspiring his team of tech hero's. The people that behind the scenes do things with software and data that I still find staggering.

And of course, there are other amazing people that have built methods, algorithms, processes, marketing and client relationships that has built massive value.

However the journey is not even nearly over. In fact, I can’t wait to get going on this new chapter. To share a passion for digital marketing with an amazing profession. To help create the marketing software of today and tomorrow.

Who wants to be acquired? I do. As long as it's by a company like ScribbleLive.