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Posts Tagged ‘Intrepid’

SDL To Take Over Alterian

Posted in business, tagged Alterian, Intrepid, lift9, SDL, SM2 on December 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Today, it was announced that SDL will acquire Alterian. Therefore soon, a social media business that started as Lift9 will be getting its fourth company name within the last two-and-a half years.

I started Lift9 in July, 2009 to offer social reports to large brands. On April, 2010 we merged with a boutique market research company Intrepid to provide deeper insights from the social data set. Shortly thereafter we were acquired by Alterian in September, 2010 to compliment its social monitoring and listening tool SM2.

Social is a hot space. Four transactions in two-and-a half years may not be the norm, but there certainly are a lot of activities within the Social market. I believe we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what will happen as the Social space matures further. The social data set has disruptive elements that will attract many innovative minds who will build considerable values in this space.

For me, this acquisition is very positive. We will have greater resources to execute on our vision of providing social insights and foresight in compelling ways. SDL has language and statistical capabilities that can really improve our tools and solutions. I expect immediate impact in extending our social offerings.

My goal today remains the same as when I started Lift9. I want to answer critical business questions faster, cheaper and more accurately than anything in the market by using social data. I believe SDL provides a conducive platform for us to execute on this goal in even a bigger way.

So, how do I personally feel about all the changes — going from a two-person startup to now being a part of a Fortune 1000 company in two-and-a half years? I consider where we are now in such a short period of time as success. Being a part of large organization offers greater opportunities as well as additional challenges. I can live with that.

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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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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

Done deal. David Eldridge, CEO Alterian

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Good Bye Vietnam, For Now

Posted in entrepreneur, tagged Intrepid, social media research, travel, Vietnam on August 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

So concludes another trip to Vietnam.

It was cooler than my last visit in Spring. It’s rainy season and the overcast skies provided some relief from the sun, and the occasional down pours cooled the city.

The Intrepid research center moved during my trip. While the start-up office, two rooms in a large house, was adequate for the first year, we needed to create a better working environment for our growing team. The new location is a nice commercial office building in District 4.

Everyone enthusiastically helped in moving the equipment. There were a lot of excitement in claiming personal work areas in the new bright and open environment. Well deserved. After all, this group of analysts are a large part of our recent success.

I also had a couple of American visitors on this trip. Showing them around and seeing their reactions to the unique elements of Vietnam reminded me about my first trips here: The shock of seeing the scooter traffic for the first time; the hesitation on the first few attempts at crossing the street; the utter delight when sampling the wonderful local cuisine; feeling the vibrance of a developing economy; the pleasure of that first hair and face washing at the salons.

I realized that I have learned a lot about Vietnam since first coming here to start the research center about a year ago. I was able to answer most of their questions. I even taught them a few Vietnamese words, or at least my version of those words. We made a lot of the locals smile with our attempts.

I also have a great network of friends here who fill any open time with meals, drinking and even dancing at times. Again, they kept me out pretty late last night and I only got to the airport less than hour before my flight.

Just another typical Vietnam trip. I leave now with manicured nails, a bit of a hangover, and the knowledge that as the company continues to grow, there will be many other trips in my future.

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Getting All I Asked For – Lots of Traveling

Posted in business, entrepreneur, social media, travel, tagged company building, culture, global business, Intrepid, lift9, management, social media research on August 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »

“Be careful what you wish for.”

I was very specific when starting Lift9 (which has since become Intrepid Consultants) that I wanted a business that was global. I had a lust to travel again as I had done during most of the 90s when helping to build ARIS to its IPO in 1997.

Last month I was in London for three weeks, returned home to Seattle for just the past week, and am now on an airplane to Ho Chi Minh City for the coming week.

The good news is that our company is doing so well that such travel is necessary. It’s exciting to see a plan come together. It was about a year ago that I initially came to Vietnam with the idea of starting a social media research center in Ho Chi Minh City. Now, I’m visiting again because the group has been so successful that we’re moving the research center to a better and bigger facility.

Our vision was always to make sure that our global offices, including the one in Ho Chi Minh, were going to be integrated into one core culture. In other words, we wanted to allow people in each office to all have equal opportunities to grow and contribute to Intrepid. After watching the “two-class” dysfunctional relationships that were built with many of the off-shoring efforts of the IT industry, we wanted to build something very different.

To that regard, when I return from this trip, one of our most promising rising stars, a researcher from the Ho Chi Minh, will be accompanying me back to Seattle, then to a trade show in Chicago. It wasn’t easy to get his visa for such a trip, but lots of people helped to make it possible. It will be his first trip to the US, and the Seattle office has some good events planned for his welcome.

So, while the jetlag and the long-stints in hotels can be tiring, when I see what we are building, and the relative success in such a short period of time, I’m still happy to be getting “what I had asked for.”

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Disruption Creates Opportunities

Posted in business, entrepreneur, social media, tagged Intrepid, iphone, market disruption, market research, social media on July 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Disruptive forces in history make impact that is long-lasting and change the status quo.

We as humans walked and ran for majority of our history. Then, the invention of wheels disrupted our lifestyle and allowed us to be much more mobile. The Mongols disrupted the world by using horses in warfare. The US became a connected nation through the disruptive force of rail roads.

In modern commercial context, everyone now understands how disruptive the iPhone has been to the mobile industry. It changed the positioning of mobile carriers upside down. Another obvious example is the internet. The world wide web, which started as a place to put your company brochure on a web site, has changed how retail, customer support, and almost every aspect of businesses are run. That’s disruption.

In business, we constantly look for those disruptions. They represent opportunities for innovative, smaller companies to take market share. For forward-thinking entrepreneurs, these times are fertile ground to create something big. Too often entrepreneurs look for opportunities just to fill the void within the inefficiencies of large, bureaucratic organizations. Building a company during a disruptive period in any industry provides greater, richer opportunities.

Intrepid is building a company within the social media space, which is a disruptive force in of itself. Right now, I see great opportunities to apply social media data into the rigor of academic market research. Others obviously understand this as well. Forrester just came out with a report on integrating social media to research. The disruption in this space is being validated.

As a person interested in company building, such opportunity is all you can ask for. Now, we just need to out-execute competitors who see the same opportunity. That, my friends, is the game that makes everyday so much fun.

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