Palmer: Major 2012 social intelligence acquisitions failed to become meaningful businesses
Giles Palmer · 1124 Why BrandWatch Acquired BuzzSumo, Past $50m ARR · Aug 22, 2018 · at 5:50
Brandwatch CEO Giles Palmer reflects on the 2012 wave of major social media software acquisitions by companies like Google and Salesforce.
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“I mean, and actually, if you look at those acquisitions, None of them really have gone on to meet, to be meaningful.”
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More from Giles Palmer
Palmer: None of the 2012 social software acquisitions became meaningful businesses
“I mean, and actually if you look at those acquisitions, None of them really have gone on to meet, to be meaningful.”
Palmer: 2012 social SaaS acquisitions failed due to premature buyouts
“So it, and that would indicate to me that they were bought prematurely. You know, they weren't mature businesses. They hadn't figured out what, why they existed and what they were trying to solve for.”
Palmer: Brandwatch acquired BuzzSumo for 3x to 5x revenue in cash
“Did we pay five X? No, not quite, but you know, it's, you are north of three X. I'm not saying, but it was a good, it was a, the founders at BuzzSumo did great. It was a cash, almost exclusively cash deal.”
Brandwatch is profitable, employing 420 staff with over $60M in revenue
“You know, this year we'll do more than sixty million dollars in revenue, and there's 420 staff in the business, so, and it's profitable.”
Salesforce and NetSuite have natural organizational virality that specialized SaaS lacks
“I'm envious of companies like NetSuite and I guess Salesforce that just end up having this kind of viral effect across once they get it, once they get a customer. We have to work very hard for retention. We have to make our products incredibly sticky.”