September | 2010 | Meet John Song

Archive for September, 2010

PART IV: Closing The Deal

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged Alterian, Bob Hale, Daren Nitz, David Eldridge, Intrepid, John Song on September 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART IV: Closing the Deal

Bob Hale, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Alterian, came to visit in June. It was obvious he had done his research and was asking good qualifying questions about our business. He decided to stay for dinner at Barolo Restaurant that night rather than flying back home.

Everything just made a lot of sense. Alterian had a great suite of marketing products, including SM2 (social media monitoring software) that needed services support. A large part of their revenues came from their channel and we had a model with our research center in Ho Chi Minh that could complement, rather than threaten such partners. Also, we could help pull in Atlerian’s platform into our research and strategy engagements. Intrepid had a global reach which matched Alterian’s need for services throughout its 14 offices.

The negotiations went quickly and were finalized by end of July. It helped that we had executives experienced in transactions like this. I hired my brother, Paul Song, to do the final negotiations because he is very knowledgeable in these matters, but also because I didn’t want to be negotiating with my future bosses.

Then, the due diligence started with a tight deadline to close the deal by the end of August. I must admit I was not quite as prepared for this process as I had thought. Given that Alterian is a public UK company, there were a lot of laws and regulations that I was not familiar with. Additionally, I had under-estimated the rigor of the due diligence process.

In order to protect my team from being too distracted from running the business, I took on most of the due diligence effort myself with the support of a fantastic attorney, Daren Nitz, who had supported me though previous transactions.

The deal had some dramatic twists and turns, but the business executives at Alterian would always help put the business objectives in perspective when things were at an impasse. They gained my respect through the process, re-affirming our decision to join forces together. Never did I have a backroom discussion about corporate politics with any individual executive. They were aligned in vision and on how to execute. This has not always been my experience with these deals.

I’m extremely optimistic about our future. Misia Tramp and Liz High are already incorporating Alterian suite of products into some of our solutions. Warren Sukernek, Wilson Raj and Ed Kim are preparing for the expected increase in demand for social media services from Alterian’s channel and direct sales force.

The decision to join Alterian was relatively easy. The process to complete the deal was very intense and challenging but well worth the effort. The momentum we are creating reassures me that our initial vision to help define the social media analytics market has just become much more probable.

So, thirteen months after starting Lift9, I was in the Alterian Bristol UK office signing the Stock Purchase Agreement with David Eldridge, having scarfed down some late night Dominos pizza, feeling relieved that the due diligence was finally over… and looking forward to the future.

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PART III: When 1+1 Can Equal Something Greater Than 2

Posted in business, Digital Marketing, entrepreneur, social media, tagged Alterian, Intrepid, John Song, lift9, Liz High, market research, Misia Tramp, social media on September 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART III: When 1 + 1 Can Equal Something Greater Than 2

We met at Wild Ginger for the first time in December, 2009. Misia Tramp and I talked about leveraging the available social media data for market research projects. She obviously knew her subject matter as she had been providing market research services through her company, Intrepid, for more than 11 years.

Misia had charisma that was further enhanced by her proper British accent. I was intrigued about the rigor of market research methods that could be used with social media data to gain truly useful insights. We left that lunch with just a promise to reconnect, but my mind was already racing ahead about the possibilities.

Lift9 had expertise around social media data and analytics. We had an improving team of cost-effective analysts at our research center in Ho Chi Minh. Intrepid had agro rhythms, methods and rigor from market research projects that could potentially be applied to social data. They had a bigger revenue base, but struggled with margins that would be improved with Lift9’s cost structure and focus on accessible digital information.

My first proposal was to merge Lift9 with only the US entity of Intrepid. In the end, however, we decided to merge both the UK and US operations of Intrepid with Lift9. Misia’s business partner, Liz High, had been running Intrepid UK.

We put together an operations agreement in late January, 2010 to test whether we could merge the two companies’ products. Meanwhile, we concurrently kicked off the due diligence of the deal.

The signs were encouraging from the start. Misia was able to get more attention from her client base by incorporating social elements into her pitch. In many cases we were able to deliver faster, better and more cost-effective outputs right away.

The biggest challenges were at the speed we needed to improve our cash flow, which had been a deteriorating issue for Intrepid, and how to effectively merge the two different cultures into working cohesively together. We allowed some turnover of people in the beginning, and focused on driving sales and improving margins and cash flow.

On May 3, 2010, we finalized the merger with Lift9 taking controlling interest, but keeping the Intrepid brand. From there, the financial performance began to improve so dramatically, I started to think about raising capital to acquire additional boutique market research companies that had solid client bases. We now had tangible proof that combining social elements with traditional market research methods provided compelling insights that resulted in better sales traction and improved financial results.

The management team approved plans to raise money for acquisitions, which included up to 11 potential transactions within a three-year period.

Right about then, I received a call from an Alterian senior executive about a possible service partnering deal using its social media monitoring tool, SM2. When he asked to come visit us, I had an inkling our world was about to change yet again.

My advice to entrepreneurs is to keep improving your companies’ stories through different possibilities. Don’t get too stuck in just what you are trying to do with your current resources. Understand what’s happening in the market around you and find ways to improve your story within that context.

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PART II: Continuous, Honest Self-Evaluation of the Business

Posted in business, entrepreneur, management, tagged Intrepid, John Song, Lft9, social media on September 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

PART II: Continuous, Honest Self-Evaluation of the Business

Everyone loved the idea conceptually, but securing client contracts was a whole another matter.

We started selling our social media solution in late October, 2009. This had given us time to set up and train our researchers in Vietnam. When presented with our sample Lift9 reports on social media, people in the industry seemed genuinely impressed. We secured a few quick contracts, making us extremely optimistic about our future.

The market was young and immature, and a lot of bad social media reports were being delivered by agencies, setting the bar low.

Our research center was getting better with each report. These researchers in Vietnam were smart and were able to apply new learning to each and every new report.

Then, we hit a slight wall. We had a stretch where the sales cycle seemed to take longer. We discovered the following problems:

We secured the “low-lying” fruit opportunities within our personal networks, which explains the initial success
We had trouble competing against agencies that were burying their social media monitoring cost into their retainers, thus making cost-savings a difficult benefit to sell
A lot of organizations didn’t appropriately budget for social media intelligence, so internal groups had a hard time securing money for such support
The insights in our reports were interesting to start, but we even had a difficult time articulating the value of such reports on an on-going month-to-month basis

The last point (#4), in particular, bothered us. My background was in Business Intelligence before Web Analytics. I knew that data could give invaluable insights if one KNEW which business questions to ask. We had been too focused on our cost-effective and speed-to-report competitive advantages. We needed more compelling insights than just the monthly change in the volume of a brand’s mentions on social media.

If we had better applications for social data, the potential truly would be tremendous. Lift9 was already getting a lot of attention just because we were in the hot space of social media. We now were looking for something more disruptive to the market than the general social media monitoring efforts. What would it be?

It was around this time in December that I was introduced to Misia Tramp, President of Intrepid US.

We had gotten to near break-even business relatively quickly because of our low-cost model. It would have been easy to just focus on getting to a good cash flow business, but we wanted to build something bigger than that. Such perspective forced us be extremely honest with ourselves and realistic about our situation. It kept us motivated to find that “disruption” factor, and would not let us be content with our initial progress.

My advice to entrepreneurs (or businessmen) is to be honest with your situation and realistic about what still needs to be done. Acknowledge the challenges ahead so they become less daunting and you and your team can prepare to overcome them. A lot of people at this stage tend to bury their heads in the sand.

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PART I: The Lift9 Story, Picking the WHO? First

Posted in business, entrepreneur, management, social media on September 5, 2010 | 2 Comments »

PART I: Picking the WHO? First

I had an idea and a gut feeling. Social media data was going to be increasingly valuable. Yet, no matter how many social media monitoring tools entered the market to pull this growing mountain of data, it would never be of substantial value to businesses without human analysis, which is expensive.

I just had amicably parted ways with Ascentium, the company that had bought my web analytics consultancy, ZeroDash1, the year before. I was ready for another venture.

I met with Ed Kim in July, 2009 at the prodding of my wife, who happened to be friends with his mother. Ed didn’t have any experience in marketing, much less social media. He seemed a bit unsure of himself at times, but I knew right away he could be instrumental in getting the Lift9 business plan off the ground.

He was naturally analytical and I could sense his hunger for a new challenge. Even more importantly, I knew he would appreciate the opportunity and be extremely honest and loyal. I hadn’t perfected my plans yet and needed someone who would trust my direction from the start.

Two weeks later, we flew to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam — him, with a one-way ticket. His world was about to be rocked. The plan was for him to start a social media research center in Ho Chi Minh, a place he had never even thought of visiting until I met him.

The truth is I had a lot of support infrastructure for him. My brother, nephew and a good family friend had gone to Vietnam two years earlier to set up a web-based real estate information company. They had a facility we could use, and offered to let us leverage their two years of experience of running a company in Vietnam. Their support ended up being truly invaluable.

Ed built a tremendous team. His work ethic exceeded all my expectations, and he gained his own social media knowledge very quickly. More importantly, he and I shared a common vision about the work culture we wanted to build in the research center. We both wanted to create an environment that would be fun, interesting and nurturing within the context of the Vietnamese culture.

Meanwhile, I was heavily recruiting a local social media expert, Warren Sukernek, who was with Radian6 and under challenged. I needed an expert who was delivery focused, someone who could execute on the vision.

After several meetings, Warren, a relatively risk-averse individual, took a leap of faith and joined our startup venture in October. Warren has been my right-hand man ever since. He fills my void with his pragmatism. Yet, he grasps concepts quickly and is able to implement ideas into tangible outputs. Although our personalities are different, we were very much aligned on the corporate culture that we wanted to build. Once he started interacting with the Vietnam research team, he put his heart and soul into ensuring their success.

We were an unlikely group to come together to start Lift9. Our backgrounds didn’t obviously align at first glance, but our ethos and desire to build something that reflected our principles did match up. As I’ve blogged many times, it’s the Who first, then the What ? (Good to Great, by Jim Collins).

Entrepreneurs many times hire people like themselves or someone with just a great resume. At a startup stage both those strategies may backfire. If everyone is of the same personality or perspective, you collectively will have big blind spots. Someone with a perfect resume may not be prepared for a startup environment and become disruptive.

I was fortunate to have picked the right team and empowered them to grow, even fail at times, but to ultimately be successful.

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The Signing: Acquired by Alterian

Posted in business, entrepreneur, social media, tagged Acquisitions, Alterian, Intrepid, lift9, M&A on September 3, 2010 | 2 Comments »

The Dominos Pizzas arrived while we were all scattered among the desks in front of the CEO office. It was late, nearing 10pm in the Alterian office in Bristol, UK. The “deal” team was frantically making the final changes to the stock purchase agreement, while others were trying to coordinate the signing of a wide range of documents from three different continents.

I called Warren Sukernek, the EVP of Intrepid US & Vietnam, who was in Seattle eight hours behind, imploring him to get all the new employment agreements signed. I knew he was trying his best, he always does, but my anxiety was growing by the minute.

Hungry, those of us in Bristol, devoured the pizzas without much enthusiasm. It was just necessary fuel to get us past the finish line.

We had gotten all the signatures from Ed Kim, Director & Country Manager for Intrepid Vietnam, and now were waiting for documents from the London and Seattle offices. The executives who had gathered in Bristol could not sign until all the other documents were first signed and accounted for.

Liz High, the Managing Director of Intrepid UK, informed everyone that all the documents were now accounted for from the London office. I resisted calling Warren again.

Meanwhile, the final schedules to the stock purchase agreement were ready for my review. I particularly focused on the list of our liabilities, which seemed to grow at every revision.

Finally, Warren called with the welcomed news of delivering the necessary documents from the Seattle office. Now, all the documents had to be routed to Alterian’s lead attorney in California.

David Eldridge, the CEO of Alterian, the company that was about to acquire my company, Intrepid, went to the printer while the final version of the stock purchase agreement was being printed. He playfully joked about how the stack of paper felt like a lot of money. We all laughed at the humor, but also with some relief knowing that the deal was about to happen.

It had been almost three months since Alterian approached Intrepid with interest, and five long weeks of grueling due diligence since negotiating the initial terms of the deal in late July. The month of August had been tremendously intense for me, and it was about to end.

With the stack of papers, David and I with the rest of the deal team walked to the front desk and signed the deal in front of the Alterian’s logo. Done deal!

How did I feel just then? Relieved mostly. I was Just happy at being able to move on from the grind of due diligence.

In the following blog posts, I will be writing a series about starting Lift9 a little more than a year ago and merging it into the Intrepid brand before signing this deal to join forces with Alterian.

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Intrepid Acquired by Alterian

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged Alterian, Intrepid, John Song, M&A, social media on September 1, 2010 | 4 Comments »

It was shortly after we signed on as a customer of Techrigy’s SM2 last year that we heard about Alterian’s acquisition of the social media tools company.

Now, our company, Intrepid, has just been acquired by Alterian as well. Obviously, I applaud Alterian’s vision. Together, we will be able to provide a very compelling solution around social media intelligence.

The growth in the adoption of social media has been astounding, yet we’re still just in the beginning stages. Social data is growing exponentially, and buried in it are gold mines of insights. I believe getting at them properly requires both a robust platform as well as good human effort.

Alterian offers a world-class integrated marketing platform. Intrepid offers services that provide insights around social data. Together, we extend each other’s reach and complement one another’s strengths. Alterian customers and partners now will have accessible support around how to use social data. Our analysts can do the digging of the data that uncovers the gold mine of actionable insights.

As part of our integrated launch plan, Alterian has prepared service packages that will immediately add value to those deploying Atlerian’s SM2. Once customers and partners understand what and how to ask compelling marketing and research questions around social data, the platform will become much more valuable. I’m confident that our social media expertise will be a welcomed augmentation to Alterian’s marketing platform for both customers and partners.

For Intrepid, we now have a solid marketing platform behind us. This allows us to be a legitimate player in coming up with over-arching social intelligence solutions that are more efficient and eloquent. Alterian’s global reach really offers a tremendous opportunity for all of us to push thought-leadership in social data solutions across different markets.

It’s still a brave new world in terms of social media intelligence. And I’m very excited to have joined forces with Alterian to make our impact.

Here is a link to our video about the acquisition:

http://www.yourbusinesschannel.com/vip/9a55f630-8afa-4703-8f4b-0ab2842a001a/bf4469d8-4da4-45bc-9ab0-43d153257422/540