Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014

I posted this over at the Percolate blog last week and thought I'd post here as well. It helps explain what I've been up to for the last few years. To all of you: Thanks so much for your support along the way. I really really appreciate it.

In trying to write up this post recapping 2013, I kept trying to come up with a way to define the first three years of a startup’s life. The first year is clearly about identifying the problem. We spent 2011 with a clear sense that there was a challenge to be solved in helping brands create content with technology (because James and I had lived it in our previous lives in the marketing world), but we still had to prove it was something we could solve and would drive value for our clients.

By the end of year one we had some great clients and a good sense for what needed to be done. From there we spent year two proving it. We started to build a bigger team and bring on more and bigger clients. By the end of year two (2012), we had seen real client success and continued to see momentum in the content space (especially from the big social platforms, who after Facebook’s IPO in May, 2012, were taken a lot more seriously by the business world).

Year three, last year, was about building out the business. We nearly tripled the staff in 12 months (we’re now almost 90 people), shipped an incredible amount of product, and brought some of the world’s best brands on board as Percolate customers.  As a co-founder it’s a crazy and amazing feeling to walk into our office and feel the buzz of that many people working on delivering great marketing technology for clients. That our mission, to be the leading content marketing platform, has stayed the same, only makes things feel even better.

But, of course, the life of a startup isn’t about looking back. So what does year four (2014) hold for Percolate? I’d say this is the year we fully establish ourselves in the market. We’ve learned enough (both over the last three years of the company and the course of our careers), to know definitively that we are solving the number one challenge in marketing: How to create engaging, relevant content on a continual basis without throwing an unlimited amount of money against the problem. We also know that we have built the best product and team to solve the problem, so this year is about making sure everyone else knows those things, as well as continuing to bring top-tier service and features to our clients day-in-and-day-out.

Finally, the last note here is a gigantic thank you to all our clients, both new and old. Their support, guidance, and ideas, have really driven our product, and more broadly business, through the last few years. It’s a cliche to say that without clients you don’t have a company, but it’s also very true. So, to all of you who are reading this, thanks for all the support. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you and it’s our commitment to continue to go above and beyond expectations (surprise and delight as Kiva, our VP of Sales likes to say). Keep being awesome.