awe.sm News

That there may be the last awe.sm pun I make on this blog, because today we’ve announced that Unified has acquired awe.sm!

Every opening line I originally came up with for this post was clichéd as hell (“proud to announce…”, “ending one chapter, beginning a new one…”, etc). I guess the reason why these posts are so full of clichés is that it’s common to express a lot of the same emotions in these circumstances:

Pride – It’s impossible not to be nostalgic at a time like this. Just 5 years ago, awe.sm was little more than whiteboard sketches and notes on napkins. I once read a great blog post about the importance of celebrating the small victories in a startup. And when you add up all those victories – from every incredible hire, to the customer wins, to the amazing investors who backed us – this moment is the culmination of all the fantastic and gratifying moments that have led to it.

Excitement – Unified is an extremely impressive company. As a first-time entrepreneur, I appreciate all too well the value of the experienced leadership team Unified has in Sheldon, Jason, and Calvin. In our conversations with Unified, there were 3 specific things that convinced me this deal was the best way to take what we had built to the next level:

1. Their understanding of and appreciation for the power of the technology we’ve developed at awe.sm;
2. Their proven sales and marketing machine running at full speed as we were just assembling ours; and
3. Our shared vision of delivering data-driven marketing solutions across owned, earned, and paid social media.

What sealed the deal for me was talking with David and Jeff, co-founders of PageLever which was acquired by Unified last year. Over a year after the acquisition, the PageLever technology and team are flourishing inside Unified and that is a big part of the reason we think it’s a great home for awe.sm.

Gratitude – I am most proud of and grateful to the world-class team we assembled. Not only because of their amazing talent and commitment but because of the incredible (and incredibly enjoyable) culture they created. To Laurie, Jeremiah, Bennett, Jonathan, Randal, Tim, Beth, Mason, Tilly, Andrew, Cole, Bryon, Johnny, Curtis, Ginevra, Jeremy, and Fred, thank you for everything you’ve done to make awe.sm so much more than I could have ever imagined! I am still in awe of the investors who have supported us in every possible way on this sometimes bumpy road: Mark Suster @ Upfront Ventures; Jerry Neumann @ Neu Venture Capital (best VC site evar!); Jennifer Lum & Peter Wernau @ Apricot Capital; Taylor Davidson & Darren Herman @ kbs+ Ventures; Howard Lindzon & Tom Peterson @ Social Leverage; and Ryan McIntyre @ Foundry Group. Finally, I want to thank every awe.sm customer for trusting us and helping us improve every day. One of the key reasons we’re doing this deal is that we believe we can deliver you even better products and services as part of Unified, and we’re excited to dig in and start showing you what we can do together. As always, you can reach us at support [at] awe.sm with any questions or feedback.