Sweet, SweetIQ

Mohannad, Mike and the team at SweetIQ, the company that Real Ventures first backed just over 5 years ago, embarked on the next stage of their journey following the announcement of their acquisition by Reach Local. Congratulations to all concerned !

We have had a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding time working with the founders and with the team they have built, but when you sell your stake in a company you sometimes wonder whether you sold out at the”right” price. It’s rare that you ever get a chance to actually have something against which to judge the sale price, but in this case we did. Between the day we signed the term sheet with Reach Local / Gannett and the day we closed the transaction a very comparable company, YEXT, had it’s IPO on Nasdaq.

Speaking with Mohannad, CEO at SweetIQ and with Sharon Rowlands, CEO of Reach Local at the closing dinner we were all feeling pretty good that the deal we had struck very much fell in line with the pricing metrics that YEXT had achieved in the public markets. The other question we had been asking ourselves prior to the sale to Reach Local was how SweetIQ would fare against a well funded competitor such as YEXT. The team at SweetIQ had done a phenomenal job in establishing themselves as a major force in the location marketing industry but YEXT was hoping to take it to another level with the IPO.

There was no doubt that this played on our minds as we considered Reach Local’s unsolicited offer, but the more we thought about how the combined force of SweetIQ and Reach Local would create a new leader in the location marketing industry, the more we saw that this path was not only a very rewarding choice to make as investors but was also an amazing platform on which to build a globally dominant software company — and more than capable of taking on YEXT !

In the SweetIQ team Sharon and Reach Local have got themselves a great product, a large and committed customer base and one of the most talented teams in the business. And SweetIQ have found an ambitious leader, a complementary product set and customer base and a strong backer, with excellent pedigree, and a commitment to a digital future.

The team at Real Ventures are excited to see how the future unfolds for the company we first backed 2,025 days ago and are happy and honoured that we could have been part of this journey.